We met when we were 14, in our high school World History class. We circled each other for a few years hanging out with each other in our overlapping friend groups. Brooke was decidedly attracted to Blaine’s nerdiness and low-key shenanigans. Blaine thought that Brooke’s combination of intelligence and unreserved strangeness could not be passed up!

In our senior year, we spent months flirting in our AP U.S. Government class. Finally, on a trip to William and Mary for Model UN we recognized a mutual attraction. Sitting next to each other, sharing music, and talking turned a long bus ride home into the beginning of something beautiful!

We dated though the end of high school and into college, riding the trains and braving the Friday evening traffic between Charlottesville and Washington, D.C. Happy to have one another in this exciting yet tumultuous time of new faces and new places, we made the best out of the challenging situation. However, we broke up in our second year of college as we both settled into our lives at our respective schools.

We reconnected in 2017 when Brooke was in D.C. for a work conference. We started talking again and picked up right where we left off! We found that after eight years apart, we’d had many opportunities to grow, while maintaining the core characteristics that we’d once loved about one another.

After just a few short weeks of talking again, Blaine was flying to Miami to visit Brooke every other weekend. Though, when the flight attendants began recognizing him, it quickly became apparent that this was not a sustainable long-term solution. As the great philosophers Enrique Iglesias and Pitbull once said, “She gonna make you move to Miami”, and after a few months Blaine left D.C. and moved down to Miami to be with Brooke. Since then, we’ve moved all up and down the east coast as Brooke finished her Ph.D., from Miami, to Philadelphia, before finally landing in New Haven.

Together we welcome any new adventure that arises! We’re looking forward to a wonderful forever and cannot wait to celebrate with friends and family!