Alex and Ryan officially met back in 2017 when working together at BMW of Manhattan. However, Ryan first swooned over Alex at his first interview at BMW at the end of 2016. After a few short months, they started working together and Ryan was smitten with Alex, hanging out with her in the lobby at any chance he could get. Ryan was eager to ask Alex to attend his birthday celebration in July with some of his friends in Brooklyn, where they both resided.

After a month of inside jokes and get-to-know-you conversations, Alex one day was showing off her beautifully color-coordinated calendar to Ryan. As a dancer, she was juggling four to five jobs at one time and always ran out to the next thing. Ryan saw that one upcoming Friday was blank. Having remembered her favorite restaurant in the city from a previous conversation, he strategically asked if she would be free to get dinner with him that day and maybe get some gelato afterward. Enamored by Ryan's skillful and smooth invitation (Completely unaware of how much Ryan was freaking out internally at the time), Alex gleefully accepted his dinner date request.

Their first date went swimmingly, after a tasty Indian dinner, they got delicious gelato and spent the rest of the evening sitting on a bench in Washington Square Park, chatting it up until the NYPD kicked them out when the park closed at midnight.

Fast forward six years, four apartments, and a whole pandemic later, Ryan planned on asking for Alex's hand in marriage. Simultaneously, they were also planning on moving to Colorado by the end of the year. They found the perfect ring together but the move had to come first, or so Alex thought. On December 18th Ryan deceptively disguised the day as a fun walk down memory lane by visiting all their favorite places in Manhattan. So as a last hurrah, they walked through the Union Square holiday market, over to Washington Square Park, and intended on visiting their other favorite spots, but Ryan had other plans. It just so happened that there was a live jazz quartet playing beautiful music nearby at the exact same park bench where they spent their first date. Ryan stood up, reached into his pocket, bent down to one knee, and asked if Alex would be his forever person. Thankfully she said yes because the entire section of the park was watching us!