We were introduced by friends who were dating at the time. Molly was in her senior year of high school and Briar was on leave from the Army. We exchanged numbers and were texting for a couple months before planning to meet when Briar came home for Christmas. We quickly hit it off and spent a few days together hiking, getting coffee, and driving around town trying to find more excuses for the day not to end.

We started dating and were long-distance for some time while Molly went off to Ohio State and Briar moved to Fort Campbell. With so many life changes and limited transportation to make long-distance work, we decided to just be friends as we navigated new stages of our lives.

We started dating again in 2019 and making weekend trips to Kentucky and Ohio. We became long-distance pros and looked forward to moving from six to three hours apart as Briar moved to Fort Benning and Molly began her Master's at Mississippi State. Most weekends were spent together in Mississippi where we visited surrounding towns and were top-tier Mississippi State fans attending football and baseball games.

In between all of this were little moves for internships and jobs, finding times to align holidays and time off and work schedules, and long drives and plane rides. But when you’re finding your way to your favorite person anything is possible.

We're both in Pennsylvania now working on our degrees and enjoying sharing day-to-day life. Long-distance gave us the opportunity to appreciate sharing little things like grocery shopping trips together, coming home to share stories about our days, and getting to spend lazy Saturday mornings making breakfast together.

Briar orchestrated a proposal that was a total surprise! He suggested a hike to the Mt. Nittany overlook on one of his days off (actually he suggested we go home for a weekend where he would have taken me on the hike we took on one of our first dates. I claimed I was too busy to take a weekend to go home. I then had to schedule a meeting over the day we originally planned to take the hike ... oops, third time's the charm). It happened to be a particularly icy day, but we grabbed Roo and started the hike anyways. The uphill hike took us three times as long as expected as we slid backwards, used sticks and trees to help pull ourselves up the ice-covered hill, and Roo scampered between the two of us as we slid around the trail. I couldn't figure out why he was so determined we get to the overlook. We finally made it to the top and set up a tripod we use to take photos on hikes, solo trips, etc. and walked to the overlook for a picture. Roo, as a paid actor in this proposal, rolled over for a belly rub as we posed for the picture. As Briar bent down to scratch her, I noticed he was pulling a ring out of his vest...

- Molly