"I really, really, really, really, really, really like you."—Carly Rae Jepson

For those of you who haven’t heard the story, Drew and Shannon met thanks to the absurd algorithmic whim of a fake college dating site: Datamatch. For those who are unfamiliar, the Datamatch concept involves polling the student body with an intimately personal survey (featuring such hard-hitting questions as “how would you fight a gorilla?”) in order to gauge compatibility for friendship and romance. As part of this annual Valentine’s Day tradition, the school provides an incentive to get the young would-be lovebirds to meet – they pay for their food (or in our case, coffees and one cookie to share). Across campus, the promise of free food is most often the sole motivator in participating in this experiment, which I cannot emphasize enough, is thought of as a complete joke by everyone involved.

But apparently, there was something special about the odd combination of Shannon arriving four hours late (she was nothing if not honest from the start), Drew oddly insisting on waiting for her anyway (like, did he not have friends he could bring instead?), and the shared feeling of “man, too bad this was a joke and I’ll never see them again,” at the end of the night. Because, well, we’ve been together ever since.

In the 6+ years since that first cookie at Flour, we’ve partaken in PB&J’s in the White Mountains and tasted Grog in Prague. We snuggled up in our teeny hobbit hole in Somerville and hunted for secondhand treasures to fill our sprawling Allston cottage. We experienced our first pandemic, our college graduations, and welcomed three new nieces and nephews. We are so incredibly lucky to get to share not only our lives but our people – the incredible friends and family that enrich our lives more than we could ever express. We are so excited to spend the rest of our lives together and can’t wait to celebrate alongside all of you soon!