The story of Tiana & Steve is a love story for all time. Two people who fell in love as teenagers, 35 years later, found one another and fell in love all over again.

In 2007, I was living in Chicago and had come home to Kansas City for a visit. My sister decided that she would take me to a concert and I reluctantly went. When I walked in, the first person I saw was "Big Steve", my first love. We had not seen one another in several years and it was a happy reunion. We spent time together that night, and the next day, I flew back home to Chicago. Ten years later, I was now living in Kansas with my young daughter. I had thought of Steve many times over the years; in fact he had never been far from my thoughts. I had even searched social media for him and did not find him. One day, seemingly out of the blue, I received a message on social media from him. After a happy reunion via the phone, we decided to have dinner. We decided that night that we would just enjoy getting to know one another again, and that neither one of us was looking for anything serious. To both of our surprise, we discovered that we had been living in the same neighborhood, frequenting the same stores, and moving in the same area, and NEVER ran into one another. When we think about it, we understand that we are the two sides of the same coin. God's timing is perfect! We were in very close proximity to one another and never saw one another UNTIL the timing was right. We fell in love at 13 & 14. We never knew 35 years later, we would come full circle, and our first love, would be our last love. We are so grateful! Our prayer is that when you witness our love, you can feel what we feel and know that it is never to late to love and be loved.

The longer I live, the more deeply I learn that love — whether we call it friendship or family or romance — is the work of mirroring and magnifying each other’s light. Gentle work. Steadfast work. Life-saving work in those moments when life and shame and sorrow occlude our own light from our view, but there is still a clear-eyed loving person to beam it back. In our best moments, we are that person for another. -James Baldwin