Our Story

I've considered telling this story many times and for some reason today struck me as the time to put it in the blog. As many of you know, Nate and I have a VERY long history that started in 2000 when I developed a crush from afar... it took me almost a year to speak to him, which only happened when my best friend (both at the time and to this day) said "Hey Nate! Can you give Dana a ride?" We were heading to a friend's graduation party beginning of summer 2001. Little did I know Nate had developed a crush on me that year too! Our first year "dating" consisted mostly of car rides and "hanging out" with friends. Thanks to one of our mutual friends Sam, we now have a picture of us at the time (which neither of us remembers being taken). Nate is 17 and I am 15. We look kind of the same... but so young!



Nate and I gave our relationship a second try in college, but since I was at Florida State in Tallahassee and he was at University of Central Florida in Orlando, we were more than 4 hours apart which made it difficult to continue. Here is an old picture from 2004 that I scanned, at this point I am 19 and Nate is 21.



It was a longer break until our paths met again - end of December 2009. We spent a lot of time together just catching up as friends, talking about our lives over the past 5 years. Nate had become a Senior Manager at the UCF Library and recently bought a house. I was finishing my last year in grad school at Duke and had spent time living abroad. Finally in February 2010 we decided to start dating again! Here is our first picture together as a couple during that time.



And now we've celebrated our year and a half anniversary this August, and Nate is about to turn 28 and I'm about to turn 26. It's amazing how far we've come! I'm blessed with this amazing love, I don't think anyone could have predicted our story some 10 years ago. We're very happy together and I can't wait for more adventures!