“When we were kids, Neil grew up in Mexico and I grew up in Oklahoma. My aunt is a teacher who went to Mexico on an exchange program. She met Neil’s family while she was there, and became a close friend of theirs. In 2005, Neil’s family came through Oklahoma to visit her, and that’s where he met me (I was six years old at the time). We only met for the day, and we have brief memories of playing in the backyard with rollie-pollies. We saw each other a few times after that, and I had my first real crush on him. We always lived far apart and ended up losing contact though (he was too young to really be interested in girls yet anyways). Years went by without us talking, and Neil became a memory of someone I briefly knew when we were kids. Neil’s brother actually ended up moving to Oklahoma, getting married, and having a kid. Because of this, Neil’s parents bought a place to stay at while they were in town, and they had to stay there for a while because COVID hit shortly after. Neil began driving up to visit them (he had been living in Texas for a few years by this time). He had been reminded of me after seeing me on Instagram, and since he knew I lived in the area he asked if I’d like to meet up for coffee sometime. I said yes, thinking that it would just be nice to get out of the house and catch up with an old friend, but the rest was history. We started dating a few weeks later, got engaged in September 2021 (in MEXICO), and then got married in March 2022, in Oklahoma. Our favorite third wheel throughout our story has been my sister, Eliza. She is included in the photos above, and is responsible for taking the majority of our couple photos at the beginning of our relationship. So now you know our backstory. It is a little confusing, so when people ask how we met we don’t know how to answer. We just say, “When we were kids.”

- Anthea