If you ask Jared our love story began with an infamous bouncy house at New Hope Seventh Day Adventist Church where I not so graciously asked him what he was doing there. I didn’t know that anyone at our public middle school was Seventh Day Adventist. I thought I was alone, but alas here was a boy I’d seen in the hallways at school standing on my church’s lawn. While I don’t necessarily remember being sassy in a bouncy house, I do remember the immediate feeling of kinship with Jared after. We had a mutual understanding and shared experiences not many can relate to.

We then went to separate high schools, but serendipitously reconnected at his high school’s Prom in 2012. No, we didn’t go together. Yes, we did feel that connection again.

We each then moved even farther away after high school, and we didn’t physically see each other until 10 years later in 2022 when I was visiting New York. I had been curiously wondering if Jared was single and asked him if he wanted to hang out. After knowing each other for 17 years we went out on our first date. There was pasta and pool at a bar in Soho where Jared pulled out his pool glove. I laughed at him, fell in love, and the rest is history.

On October 22, 2022 Jared asked me to be his girlfriend while eating sushi in Tribeca. I said yes with no hesitation. On September 18, 2023 on Jared’s birthday trip to Vermont, he asked me to marry him while we were strolling along Lake Champlain. Again, no hesitation.