This piece was written for our wedding website and repurposed here. Mike and I got married in May 2021.

People always ask us how we met. 

It was late fall, 2009. I was 22, freshly graduated from college, living in a new city, bouncing around jobs with only a tenuous grasp on what I wanted to do. When we met, I was working weekends as a bartender on a college campus in North Philadelphia. Mike had a recording studio across the street, and would come in between sessions on Saturday afternoons. He’d order the same thing for lunch: a red snapper sandwich with fries and a Coors Light. Save for the afternoons when the home college team had a basketball game, the bar was slow, which gave me plenty of time to read Rolling Stone magazine and mostly ignore the patrons until they asked for something (I wasn’t a very good bartender, I’d come to realize). Mike, though, was different. He wanted to talk, genuinely. He asked about the new bands I was reading about and listening to. He introduced me to music from artists I already loved, slyly playing their songs from the electronic jukebox near the bar and waiting for a smile of recognition to creep on my face. “Hey, I know this…”

At some point I learned he worked for a record label. I didn’t learn of which one until sometime later, after we’d already started seeing each other. He was quiet with this information, never boastful in the way he could have been. At some point I also learned that he was multi-talented: not only did he work for a major record label, but he was also a DJ, producer, and audio engineer (thus, the reason for the studio). During the week, I worked as a copywriter for a video marketing company outside of the city, a job I slogged through with dripping boredom. By mid-week, I would be looking forward to my weekend bar shifts, knowing I’d see Mike. He was interesting to me: handsome, stylish, gentlemanly, kind. A conversationalist in a way that never felt too forward or awkward. Some days he’d stay just for an hour or less, other afternoons he’d stay for hours, sipping light beer and feeding dollar after dollar into the jukebox. On those days, we talked more, still mostly about music, but also other things. I told him I was a writer -- something I did more than was, but it was a way of processing my identity back then, as this thing I desperately wanted to be. Instead of breezing over this with the same half-believing tone most people gave me when I said the same, he was interested, asked me questions, wanted to know what I liked to write and what I liked to read. It was new, different.

Still, it’s true that -- and trust me, he still brings this up -- the first time he asked me out, I turned him down.

It was an invitation to a Zero 7 concert, a band I barely knew at that time but would grow to love. To this day, I’m still not sure why I said no. I was young and still so awkward. He seemed so self-assured and knowing. Even through all our afternoons chatting, I couldn’t begin to think that he actually liked me. 

I didn’t make the same mistake twice. Soon after, following one of our regular Saturday afternoons and maybe with a bit of liquid courage, he asked if I would write my phone number on the takeout box that housed half of the red snapper sandwich. If you know Mike, you know he only ever eats half of anything in a sitting; to this day I still find tiny bits of peanut butter cups tucked in our freezer, parts of a full piece of candy he’s been slowly snacking on for three days. He’s a Virgo through-and-through in this way: tenacious, intentional, deliberate. I relented, smiling as I etched my cell into the top of the Styrofoam container. He’d tell me later how he kept that box in the refrigerator long after he finished the sandwich, long after he’d already added my phone number to his Blackberry, just in case.

There’s more of our story to follow: our relationship blossomed during a snowstorm, the biggest in Philadelphia’s history. There were countless long nights spent talking, laughing, listening to music, learning about one another. There were very early mornings shepherding me home in the snow and ice so I could get to my new job at a cafe and begin a six a.m. shift. There was that time in early spring when he showed up at this job, a bouquet of yellow daisies in hand, as I smiled from ear to ear and told the customer in front of him that “That’s my boyfriend!” There were the warm, joy-filled summer months, long and languid, where we fell in love. 

Since then, our love has endured through two continents, two apartments, one house, countless jobs, one pandemic, and the regular ups and downs of life. Mike met me at a time in my life when I was still figuring out who I was, still questioning every decision I made, still filled with too many ideas and not enough effort put into them, but his love for me never faltered. Through our time together, he has taught me how to be more patient, less selfish, more grounded. Through him I became a better listener, more forgiving, both of myself and others. Together, we’ve learned to be better communicators and better partners to each other. Mike has seen me at my best and my worst. He’s been with me as I stumbled my way through job changes, a fledgling writing career, a short-lived business, until finally landing on my feet in a career I love, all the while cheering me on, showering me with love, and never, ever doubting me. I’ve witnessed his growth as well: as a father, an entrepreneur, an artist, and a man. 

I’m proud of our love. I’m grateful for it. I love Mike deeply, somehow more each day, and I can’t wait to see what this next chapter brings to us.