We first met in the Summer of 2017 at our internship at Pinterest in San Francisco. Kelly remembers the first time she spoke to Cal at a donut happy hour on their second day. Nervous about meeting new people, she started babbling about her love for maple donuts. Cal couldn’t help but tease her about it. We had a fun summer living in the city, exploring and adventuring with our fellow “Pinterns”, but we parted ways and went back to Madison and Boston to finish our senior years of college. Then, almost a year later, Pinterest made our paths cross again, as we were both returning full time and moving to San Francisco in August of 2018. We first hung out in groups, reconnecting with our Pintern friends, but they had already started work, and we had some time before our jobs started. So we began hanging out, just the two of us. For what we have now decided was our first date, we went to Dolores park and played frisbee on a random Tuesday afternoon, which is funny because we haven’t played frisbee since. We ended up tossing the frisbee back and forth for three hours, too distracted by the playful conversation to notice the time. A month later, we decided to make it official. Since then we’ve: * Traveled to Oregon, Washington, Utah, Arizona, Nevada, Hawaii, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Florida, Virginia, and Israel * Visited Yosemite, Lassen, Sequoia, Kings Canyon, Zion, Grand Canyon, Joshua Tree, Bryce Canyon and Crater Lake National Parks * Cheered on the Badgers, the Ducks (uh-oh to that pending rivalry), the Padres, the Twins, the Niners, the Giants, the Warriors, and the San Diego Wave (and soon to be Bay FC) * Became nomads with our friends during Covid, temporarily living in St. George, Sedona, San Diego, and Bend * Apartment hunted and moved in together * Fostered a cat * Learned to play pickle ball * Made countless pizzas * Ate at a lot of amazing restaurants * Solved 250 New York Times crossword puzzles (at the time of writing this) * Enjoyed 220 date nights (and counting)
We were house sitting for Kelly’s parents down in San Diego. It was our first date night just the two of us in a couple of weeks and we decided to go to a nice restaurant. Cal picked the place and made the reservations. We planned to leave around 6:30 to make our 7:00 reservation. Kelly started doing the chores around the house, but around 6:00 Cal offered to finish taking out the trash so she could go get ready. Ten minutes later, Cal came upstairs with a scared look on his face. “Don’t freak out, but something bad happened”, he said. She inquired further and he replied, “I broke the garage. It’s really bad. The structural integrity of the garage is damaged!”. They went downstairs to look at it, and lo and behold, a giant dent was now in the top center of the garage. Cal was panicked, worried that he might have ruined what he knew was the pending proposal. Kelly, however, was calm, and assured him that it was fine, it wasn’t his fault, and her dad could probably fix it. They should just leave it be, not try and make it any worse, and just enjoy the rest of the night. Cal, relieved, proceeded with his plan. Kelly went back upstairs to get ready and ten minutes later came down, as it was time to go. Cal was in the backyard with the beloved family dog, Kenzi, otherwise known as Lady Kensington or Kenzinitas. Earlier in the day, Cal had thrown her ball over the fence, and when Kelly came out he yelled “Look, Kenzi found a new ball!”. As Kelly approached, Kenzi brought the ball to her and dropped it at her feet, like the good retriever that she is. Kelly picked it up and it read “Will you marry Cal?”. And when she looked up, Cal was down on one knee. And one week later... Kelly's dad did fix the garage :)