One February afternoon in 2021, two strangers locked eyes in the Chicago airport. Behind their pandemic masks, they could each tell the other was smiling, and they instantly felt a spark. Luckily, they were on the same flight. They boarded the plane without exchanging words, and when they sat down in rows across from each other, Emily wrote her name and number on the back of her boarding pass. She got nervous and held onto the paper until her palms started to sweat.

As the plane began to land, she leaned over the woman in the aisle seat and passed her number to Jake. When they got off the plane, they walked side by side and started talking. They learned just a small amount about each other, but left the airport feeling excited. The next morning, they began texting and made plans to see each other the next week. What are the chances that their parents lived twenty minutes from each other in Massachusetts? Emily was living in Providence at the time, but came home quite a bit, and Jake had just moved to join his family in Mass from Kentucky six months prior.

For their first date, they met at Cook's Pond in Worcester with their dogs, Kobey and Luna, who became fast friends. They walked around the pond for hours, talking about their pasts and their hopes for the future. When they got tired of walking, they set up a table and chairs in the woods that Emily had in her car, and continued getting to know each other over a six pack of beer. When it got too cold to be outside, they brought the dogs to Greater Good Brewery. Emily drove there, and Jake decided then that he would be driving them from then on- it's true what they say about Massachusetts drivers! After 8 hours, they decided they should each head home and made plans to see each other in Providence that week.

Within a month, they had met each others' families and started talking seriously about the future. They realized they shared a lot of common interests- hiking, snowboarding, traveling, visiting breweries, and spending time with friends and family. Alongside their dogs, who quickly became inseparable, they fell in love. They took a day trip to Portland, Maine in late March, and decided that's where they wanted to move together. Emily got her teaching certification in Maine and started looking for jobs for the next school year. By May, she had a job lined up and they found a studio apartment in the East End of Portland to move into in August. They put in the work to strengthen their relationship, and in the messy, imperfect moments of learning each others' rhythms and quirks, their love grew deeper. Since then, they've enjoyed 5 years of growth, adventure, and devotion.