Our Story

Rebecca's Version: We met in orchestra during freshman year of college. Thanks Jerry! We were standpartners but barely acknowledged each other's presence that year. I just noticed that he was rather spacey and never came in on time. But I guess he was otherwise a decent violinist. Come second year, we somehow ended up sitting next to each other in organic chemistery. And I guess you could say we were friends from that point on. For the next 3.75 years, we worked on homework together, ate Saturday post-orchestra lunch together and listened to each other's woes of the week. Many of our friends claimed that we acted like "an old married couple" to which we would vehemently deny any romantic feelings for each other. When COVID sent us home in March 2020, we realized we would likely not see each other again. I was compelled to write a letter to Alex thanking him for being my closest guy friend through all the ups and downs of being a BIOE premed. On the last day of moving out of my dorm, I presented Alex with the letter over boba in the lobby of the hotel my family was staying at. Before he opened the letter, he told me he had feelings for me and the rest is history...kind of. Three months later, Alex asked me out over Skype and thus began our 3 years of long-distance dating with Alex working in Dallas and me trying to survive medical school in Norfolk. During M4 year, Alex came the weekend before my birthday. I was on an orthopedic trauma rotation and was in the OR until 10 pm that Friday night. I had reluctantly granted Alex permission to use my car while I was held up at work which turned out to be a very, very bad idea. When I got into the car the next morning, the car wouldn't start. The culprit: the headlights had been left on the entire night. Alex, with his experience driving cars with automated headlights, had failed to realize that my car's headlights were manually controlled. After 2 hrs with AAA, we were on our way. Little did I know that those 2 hours had completely ruined Alex's plan to take me to a scenic waterside location for the proposal. But all was well because Alex has an unnatural ability to do things on the fly, and he ended up proposing in my apartment before taking me out to the restaurant where we had our first date. I guess our Rice friends were right all along, good job y'all!

Alex's Version: I first met Rebecca during the first orchestra rehearsal for Rice's Campanile Orchestra since we were seated next to each other. We barely talked for the whole year and I thought she didn't play very well because I could never hear her. It turns out I was just playing too loudly the whole time. Anyways, we ended up in a couple of the same classes sophomore year since I was indecisive about my major for a while, and that gave us an opportunity to talk to each more and get to know each other better. She ended up becoming my closest girl friend and someone that I would always go to for life advice. While I only thought of her platonically for over 3 years, things started to change when the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic hit during our senior year in 2020 causing all students to have to move back home. Rebecca told me that she was heading back home for the rest of the year, and I slowly realized that meant that I would likely not see her for a really long time and maybe never. Something weird started happening, and I started to realize that I would actually miss her, much more than a lot of my other friends that I would be leaving due to the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. We both confessed our feelings to each other the day before she had to move back home to Saint Louis in a hotel lobby while drinking boba and having a heart-to-heart conversation. It was around this time that I was also going through life struggles both mentally and spiritually, resulting in me becoming a Christian, with Rebecca being there for me every step of the process. I eventually concluded that God must have put her in my life for a reason and that I would unfortunately probably never be able to get away from her, just kidding, I meant fortunately. Thank ya Jesus! I eventually asked her out over Skype during our senior year summer break since the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic was still going on, and that kicked off our long distance dating relationship. After almost 3 years of dating, I realized that she was the one I was meant to spend my life with and proposed to her after unintentionally breaking her car when I was driving it. But it's all good because I got her a new car. She said no at first because I didn't properly get down on one knee, but eventually I did and she said yessir!