Our Story

If you want to hear the super mushy story of Chase chasing Anna, you're in the right place!

If you would have told 6-year-old Anna on her first day of kindergarten that the blonde little boy a few seats back on the bus was her future husband, she wouldn’t have cared because she was so excited about her first day of kindergarten. If you would have told 6th grade Anna that the 8th grader boys’ team captain would be her future husband, she still wouldn’t have cared because she was so excited to be running cross country. If you would have told 16-year-old Anna that the senior captain of the boy’s team who sat in the same class room as she did every morning before school was her future husband, she would probably have freaked out because she finally cared a little bit about boys!

“Chase likes to tell me he had a crush on me my sophomore year, but when I look back at pictures of 15-year-old Anna, I have trouble believing that could be true!”

As cheesy as it is, Chase and I met on my first day of kindergarten (his first day of 2nd grade) on the school bus because we literally lived that close to each other our whole lives. It’s crazy to think that we spent so much time growing up around each other, even running on the same teams for several years, but throughout both of our time in school, we were really never more than acquaintances. Chase likes to tell me he had a crush on me my sophomore year, but when I look back at pictures of 15/16 year old Anna, I have trouble believing that could be true!

Regardless, we were never fully on each other’s radars until the summer after my freshman year of college. It was a rough summer for both of us, both having experienced breakups from long-term relationships and both feeling a little lonely. Chase definitely had it worse… He was out in Colorado for the summer working a boring summer internship at the DOD with a bunch of old men and restricted cell phone usage while he was at work. I was at home hanging out with alpacas and interning with different summer camps. One day I put a picture of the kids at a particular camp on my Snapchat story, and Chase saw his opportunity arise. He had worked there two summers before so he replied to the story and struck up a conversation about the camp and the crazy stuff he had dealt with while he was there.

He continued to carry on the conversation even after the camp discussion had subsided and with some persistence managed to get me to talk with him regularly after a few days. He then managed to convince me to FaceTime with him one evening, and we had our first ever substantial face-to-face conversation (which is honestly impressive since we’d known each other for 13 years at that point)! I still think that we must have set the record for the longest FaceTime; talking for a whopping 8 HOURS until I was so tired that I couldn’t keep my eyes open.

Just in case I wasn’t clear about his intentions at that point, he reached out to my sister on social media the next day to ask if he could surprise me with flowers (what a guy, right?!) So the next day while I was getting ready to leave the house, I answered a knock at the door to find a woman with “a delivery for Anna”? She walked back out to her car and brought a beautiful flower arrangement to me while I stood on the porch very confused and mystified. When I read the card, it put a smile on my face that didn’t come off until after our FaceTime call where I thanked him 1000 times because I was still in shock that a cute boy sent me flowers from the other side of the country!

The next month was a blur. We had dinner dates where we cooked mac and cheese in our respective locations and then sat down together over FaceTime to eat. As a habitual “low battery” phone user, there were also lot of calls that ended abruptly and had to be reconnected when my phone died, and even more where our conversations were interrupted with my frantically sprinting around the house looking for a charger because my phone had been on 1% for a questionable amount of time.

After what sometimes seemed like the longest month of my life, Chase finally finished his internship, and drove all the way back from Colorado. The day he got back was the day I finished mine, and we had our first official date that night. We had the most awkward, wonderful hug when I first got to his house, and after about 5 minutes of nervousness from both of us, felt like we had been best friends forever. We went out to the backyard and took a nap in the hammock (super exciting first date right?) and then got in the truck to go find a place to watch the sunset, but ended up missing the whole thing because we got distracted and drove our old bus route instead. When we got back, we made dinner together, danced in the kitchen, and had a romantic, candlelight (very mosquito ridden) dinner on the porch.

We spent about every day of the next week together and then only stopped because I had to go back to school for the semester. We both fell crazy fast for each other, and by the third day I was pretty sure we were gonna be together for a long time.

Again, it's super cheesy but when I look back, there were so many times I knew he was the one… When he suggested a nap on the first date, I knew he was the one! When he accidentally said “I love you” the first week and it felt like he’d been telling me for years, I knew he was the one. When he asked if we could share Google calendars, I knew he was the one. When he cuddled with our dogs in bed and told them he loves them, I knew he was the one! It only took us 15 years … But he’s the one :)