OUR STORY
the beginning
Although no one can be too sure, rumor has it Preston and Steph met in the fall of 2016 playing pickup soccer on the Vanderbilt fields in Nashville.
Pickup soccer turned into more-intense-than-it-should-be adult league soccer, where Preston and Steph were an unstoppable force together on defense. Preston thought maybe their on-field chemistry would translate to off-field chemistry and sent Steph friend requests on Instagram, Snapchat, and Facebook. Steph still didn’t get the hint, so Preston sent her a very forward Facebook message asking her out in the summer of 2017.
What counts as their first date is still up for debate, but several dates ensued over the course of a few months. The dates were great (especially a La La Land themed night) but the timing wasn’t perfect, so Preston and Steph kept being “just friends” and soccer teammates for a while.
In the summer of 2018, Steph moved to Barcelona for a research fellowship.
Before leaving, she told Preston that he had a place to stay if he ever found himself in Barcelona, fully expecting him to never show up. Little did she know, Preston would make sure he had an excuse to find himself in Europe a few months later for work. He stopped to visit in October and, they spent a long weekend exploring the city, going out to dinner, and meeting Steph’s friends without any romantic expectations. By the end of the weekend however, they realized that there might just be something there after all.
Still living 4000 miles apart, daily texts turned into daily FaceTime calls and Preston floated the idea of taking a trip together, conveniently framing it around his “work” again (clever!). In February 2019, Steph met preston in Dublin for a surprise Maggie Rogers concert and a weekend road-tripping through the Irish countryside, which turned into the start of their relationship. Preston took one more trip back to Spain before Steph moved back to Nashville that summer.
the convincing
They spent the next year in Nashville, making new memories together in the city that they had both grown to love on their own.
Preston bought a house and started a production company, and Steph finished her last year of medical school. When it came time to match for residency, Steph knew she was being pulled back to Boston. Preston encouraged her to chase her dreams, even though that meant being long-distance again.
Steph moved to Boston in June 2020, still in the midst of the pandemic. Preston made countless trips and worked around all the stresses of residency to be able to spend time together, for which Steph will forever be grateful.
Finally, in May 2022 Preston moved to Boston and they were able to live in the same city again for the first time in two years. Four months later, they brought home their fur child, Boomer. Exactly one week after that, Preston surprised Steph on a rooftop in Cambridge surrounded by family and a few friends and asked her to marry him. They can’t wait to begin their lives together celebrating in the place where their relationship began!
