I met Pedro the very first day I spent in the USA on my internship. It was late February of 2015 and I had just moved from Pretoria, South Africa to Marianna, Florida. I remember thinking how handsome he was at the time, but never in a million years would I have guessed where we would be today.

I worked as an intern alongside Pedro, who was a new master’s student at the time, from February until August of 2015, while also living together in a dorm on the research farm. He was a good student, but also a great teacher. I learnt so much from him over those few months. I returned to South Africa for a few weeks after my internship to change my visa to be able to study, and then went back to the USA as a master’s student, working under the same professor as Pedro, Dr. Cliff Lamb. During my first semester as a master’s student, Pedro and I both moved to Gainesville, Florida so that we could take classes in person on campus. We rented 2 rooms in the same apartment with 2 other friends and often rode our bikes to class together. Our friendship really blossomed during our time in Gainesville. Once the semester was done, we moved back up to Marianna and continued our programs from there. In 2016, we spent a lot of time working with cattle and doing lab work together. Our friendship transitioned into a romance, but the thought of a long-term commitment never crossed our minds.

In 2017, our professor took a job at Texas A&M University and invited Pedro and I to move with him and to continue our studies from Texas. We both moved to College Station, Texas in August of 2017 and pursued our PhD’s in the Physiology of Reproduction. We lived in the same apartments (we moved to a different one each year) from 2017 until Pedro accepted a job as an assistant professor at the University of Georgia at the end of 2019. I stayed in College Station until the beginning of 2021, when I moved to South Dakota to take a job with ABS Global as a sales manager. South Dakota and Georgia are very far from one another and it would take 18.5 hours to drive from our respective apartments. We had already had a long-distance relationship for just over a year, but decided to keep going, even though there was no future of us moving close to one another in sight. Nevertheless, we managed to keep our long-distance relationship going strong, and would try to see each other about once a month. Needless to say, we took quite a few plane rides during that time!

In July of 2023 I went away for a week to Canada on a girls trip with two of my oldest friends, Kirsten and Puja. Little did I know that it wasn’t going to stay a girls trip for very long. After visiting Toronto, Quebec City, and Montreal, the three of us drove down to Niagara Falls to end our trip on a high note. Once we arrived at our hotel, Puja suggested that we change and go take some nice photos down by the falls. We changed into dresses and caught a cable car down to the main walkway of the falls. Instead of heading straight to the large ‘Horse-shoe’ waterfall that was right in front of us, Puja said that we first needed to walk to a different area that had a really good view. I thought that it was strange that we didn’t make a bee-line for the huge waterfall right in front of us. Nevertheless, I went along. We walked in the sun for what felt like forever, until we were standing directly in front of the second waterfall, which was on the American side (we were on the Canadian side). Puja then told Kirsten and I that we needed to close our eyes and spin in a circle so that we could hear a frequency that would come from the American falls. I thought it sounded fishy, but I went along with it anyway. I did it by myself for a while and then Puja joined me. We looked really silly spinning in circles, holding hands with our eyes closed. Then out of nowhere, Pedro approached me, dressed in a suit and holding flowers. I burst into tears – I knew what was about to happen. He got down on one knee, took a ring box out of his pocket (he first had to stand up again to get it out), and asked me to marry him. I said “yes” and the rest is history.

At the end of October 2023, I was finally able to move to Georgia so we could be together. It took four years of long-distance, but we made it, and now live happily in our home, on the outskirts of the town of Winder.

I could write a 20-page manuscript about our story here, but I will try to be objective. I first met Nicky in 2015 in a small town called Marianna, which is located in the Panhandle of the state of Florida in the U.S. Back then, I had recently moved from Brazil to the U.S. and was starting my graduate program at the University of Florida (UF), working on a research farm. Nicky joined our former research group as an intern that spring and we ended up spending a lot of time together.

As opposed to most couples, we started living in the same house before we started dating. We lived in a dorm with several other students and interns that were working on the same farm. As you probably know, Nicky is extremely sweet and friendly, so it did not take long for us to become good friends. Yet, we only started dating towards the end of our graduate programs at UF.

While we were not officially dating, our former graduate school advisor was recruited by Texas A&M University, so we both moved to Texas together to work on our PhDs in College Station. We had an awesome time in Aggie Land and our relationship developed a lot.

After graduating, I moved to Athens, Georgia and started in my current position with the University of Georgia. Nicky still had another semester to finish her PhD, so we started dating long-distance while she was wrapping up her graduate work. Before she graduated, the Covid-19 pandemic started and that changed our plans quite a bit. After Nicky graduated, not a lot of companies were hiring because of the uncertainties related to the pandemic. Nevertheless, Nicky got a nice job offer. The only issue was that the position was in South Dakota. Nicky’s new apartment in Sioux Falls, South Dakota was over 18 h away from my house in Athens, Georgia.

Even though we had no perspective of when we would be able to move back together, we decided to continue with our long-distance relationship. Nicky moved to South Dakota in 2021 and I lost count of how many times I flew from Atlanta to Sioux Falls. Besides the long distance, our relationship continued strong, and we got engaged in Canada in July of 2023. I surprised Nicky in Niagara Falls and asked for her hand while she was on a girl’s trip with her friends Puja and Kirsten, which together with Gaby, helped me plan the whole thing. I flew from Atlanta to Buffalo, New York and took a bus to the border between the U.S. and Canada. I walked across the border and made it to the Canada side of the Niagara Falls a day earlier than Nicky so that I could organize everything (I bought flowers, decorated the hotel room, etc.). When the girls made it to Niagara Falls, I walked to the falls while messaging Puja to make sure I could get there before they did. I shared the location with the Puja and hid behind a tree until Nicky and the girls arrived. It all worked well, and she was quite surprised when I showed up and got on one knee. She said yes, and here we are, putting together the website for our wedding. In December of 2023, Nicky moved to Georgia, and we now live in Winder, a small town between Athens and Atlanta.