Our story begins in the fall of 2015, when fate brought us together at UC Berkeley. We both lived in Ehrman Hall, ironically, we were only two doors down from one another, but it wasn’t until a serendipitous encounter one game day that we truly noticed each other.

From there it all started with small moments — shared glances, casual conversations in the hallway, the kind of things that happen when you’re living so close to someone, yet unaware of how your lives are about to intertwine. That is, until October 31, 2015. A crisp Berkeley evening where we found ourselves sitting on a bench right outside our dorm dressed in ridiculous costumes after a night of Halloween fun. And that’s when we shared our first kiss.

A few months later, that same bench became the backdrop for another milestone, Steven asked Carolline to be his girlfriend. In the 9 years that followed, we lived in Minneapolis, then Los Angeles, building a life filled with laughter and adventure. Through all the moves, milestones, and changes, that bench outside Ehrman Hall remained a constant—a symbol of the love we had nurtured from the very beginning.

On June 30, 2024, Steven took Carolline back to that bench, where we had shared so many firsts. There, with the same feeling of magic that had first brought us together, Steven got down on one knee and asked Carolline to marry him, surrounded by the memories of our past. The perfect full circle moment—proof that the best love stories have a way of coming back to where they started.