On October 25, 2017 Sam was living in NYC and boarded an Amtrak train to Boston to meet up with his family for a weekend trip to Vermont. Midway though the ride to Boston, Sam's phone lost service and he cracked open the copy of The National, Amtrak's on-board magazine at the time.

Inside the cover, there was a page showing the headshots of contributors to that month's issue - Former CBS Anchor and Journalist Dan Rather, and Photographer Maddie McGarvey.

Maddie's photography for the cover story was amazing, so when the cell signal came back - Sam followed her on Instagram and sent a friendly DM.

For the next few years, Sam and Maddie were Instagram friends without much thought to each other. Sam always admired Maddie's work, and Maddie always admired Sam's sense of humor. Their friendship changed in Spring of 2020.

Maddie suddenly lost her dad Vince. She shared her loss on social media, and Sam had just lost his own father, Joe, a few months prior. He reached out to Maddie with comforting words the best he knew how. Sam reached out again throughout 2020 on big holidays - because he knew they were both feeling someone missing on those days.

Maddie felt a ton of comfort in Sam's words of encouragement as she traversed through the inevitable good and bad days of grief. It helped Sam as well, to talk his own feelings out with someone who understood the feelings on a very similar level.

This bond grew their friendship much closer.

In January of 2022 Maddie was in New York visiting some friends and met Sam for the first time, 5 years after the first Instagram DM, over dinner at Emmy Squared pizza in Brooklyn.

The pair ordered a pizza and an appetizer but neither one ate nearly anything at all, both pumped with adrenaline and nerves from the date. By the end of the date, Sam and Maddie knew they wanted to eat dinner together forever.

A month later, Sam loaded up a U-haul with his belongings and his cat Lucie, and headed for a new life in Ohio. It sounded crazy to everyone else, but it didn't feel crazy at all to Sam. He was just moving to be with his person.

Maddie didn't feel nuts at all having an almost-stranger moving into her new house. She just felt like she was welcoming in her partner.

Sam and Maddie got engaged around a year later, on February 19, 2023.