our story
Girl Met Boy
Steve and I lived in the same dorm our freshman year at Oberlin, though memories of our first meeting differ. I remember first seeing Steve as he bounded over to ask me to dance in our first swing-dancing exco class (which he had taken to meet girls…hey! that totally worked!), whereas he swears he offered me some of his string cheese several days prior. We both agree that he totally followed me home afterwards and convinced me to come out to some parties later that night.
Several weeks of hanging out followed (note to older folks: this mostly consists of giant groups of teenagers roving around to different parties and trying very hard to be cool), during which Steve kept showing up at my door and tried to overturn my total prejudice against athletes and men who wore really terrifying neon green shorts. Eventually, the persuasive combination of his knowledge of Rumi, impeccable southern manners, wanderlust, and shoulder muscles (hey! maybe athletes aren’t so terrible after all!) won me over.
We dated through college, finding ourselves, making lifelong friends, having a blast and hitting a few rough patches along the way as we grew up and bumbled our way through learning how to grow together. We moved to DC after graduation and loved that we got to come home to our own tiny apartment, our cat and our best friend.
The Proposal
On the second day of our trip to Paris, Steve insisted on extending our long walk through the city over to the Eiffel Tower. It was 1:30 in the morning, the big lights were shut off and the tower just glowed faintly. Not another soul was around and it felt like the entire world was made just for us. Steve was sitting next to me and started with you’re the best girl in the whole world, our life together is the greatest adventure and I want it to never end, asked me to marry him and gave me his grandmother’s diamond ring. I said of course.
We walked all the way home to our tiny rented apartment, totally wired, skipping across bridges back and forth along the Seine. We kept it our secret through the rest of our vacation as we explored Paris and Switzerland, grinning at each other, trying on fiancé and twisting the ring around my finger.
The Now
We moved to the Bay Area and are now living a life full of friends and food and sunshine and art and exploration. We’re madly in love and cannot wait to just be married already. If you want a peek into how I feel about Steve, you can read here, here, here, here or here. If you want a peek into how Steve feels about me, you’ll have to come over sometime and watch how he touches me every time I leave or enter a room, does laundry because I hate it, tells me I’m beautiful every day, encourages every single dream I dream up, and brings me flowers and chocolate just because.
The best part of all is that after six and a half years of loving each other, our story has really just begun.