Alyssa & Theo

The following is our journey from start to—well, never finished, but to where we are today. If you're reading this on a laptop or PC, continue onto each next chapter by clicking the arrow on the right side of the page (it's super hard to detect; look just under the transparent yellow flower to your right), OR by selecting the next circular thumbnail in the lineup at the top of the page. If you're reading this from a phone, keep clicking to the next square thumbnail (it flows chronologically left to right on each line), and when you're done reading a chapter, click the X in the top right corner of that page (in the photo image) to get back to the main story section and move on to the next chapter/thumbnail. There are six in total after this one — the final seventh thumbnail is our 12-minute Year One YouTube video, made by the bride as a first-year anniversary gift to her then boyfriend—wow that sounds weird to say now!

(P.S. We apologize for how complex these directions sound—we promise it's not that complicated. Appy Couple doesn't have the greatest interface, we've discovered.)

We so appreciate you seeing us and being interested in our story! We certainly loved creating and living it...

ENJOY, folks!!

It's the oldest story in the [modern-day] book.

Boy meets girl — online.

NOPE. Not like that.

There were no dating apps involved. No one slid into anyone's DMs or stumbled upon a “thirst trap” photo on a mutual friend’s wall and thought, well, hello there. There were no singles forums and no chat rooms for partnerless hopefuls "seeking a connection." None of the usual suspects.

So scratch that — maybe it's not the oldest story in the book after all.

Because Alyssa and Theo…(wait for it)…met on a Zoom call.

But hold on, it gets even more romantic than that.

The meeting was entirely about cryptocurrency.

(Cue the songbirds.)

So how exactly does a group of crypto geeks rattling on about blockchains and dApps from their squeaky desk chairs, collectively dreaming of going "to the moon" with their hedge fund — oh, did we mention it was specifically a digital currency hedge fund? Yep, that level of unglamorously nerdy — lead us here? Pondering wedding outfits and room blocks and hoping the DJ doesn't play the Cha Cha Slide? (Spoiler: he won't. He's great.)

Well, friends — tuck in. It's a nearly five-year story.

Just kidding. We’ll summarize. Er, we'll try to summarize. You have enough reading ahead of you on this site (which, by the way, Alyssa would really appreciate it if you did, so she doesn't have to field 2,369 questions that are already answered here. But don't tell her we told you that.)

Actually, someone did think, well, hello there, on that pivotal call that day. It just wasn't followed by a DM, or a “hook us up” nudge to a mutual friend, or any follow-up whatsoever.

It was Theo. Theo thought it. And Theo refrained from any follow-up.

Here's how it went down::

The Sunday night hedge fund meeting was led by two group leaders, cameras and mics mostly off throughout. Then came time for questions and comments.

Naturally, Alyssa had questions and comments.

On went her camera. On went her mic. And she launched — excitedly, passionately — into her vision of the future: all of them, one day, living as neighbors in waterfront A-frames right on the edge of Lake Tahoe, just as soon as their fund went "parabolic."

Cue Theo's well, hello there. He made a mental note: cute girl who’s into crypto and lake life, could be future wife.

And that was the gist of it. Their kinda-sorta “meet cute” minus the “meet” part. Theo’s camera or mic never went on. Alyssa had landed on Theo’s radar (with a loud thud), but for Alyssa, Theo simply did not exist yet. And not for some time after.

Fast forward a couple of months — don't worry, you didn’t miss anything, literally. It was that whole "great pandemic" era, so yeah — a whole lot of sitting around doing a whole lot of nothing.

After one too many continuous days of failed attempts at sourdough, doomscrolling, and Zoom sing-alongs with old camp friends in her pajamas at 2pm, Alyssa packed a bag and left her New Jersey beach town for Phoenix — to stay with her sister, see the one friend she had there, and wait out whatever the hell was happening to the world.

One afternoon, she and that Phoenix friend were hanging out poolside, sipping watermelon margaritas, and catching one another up on the latest season of their lives, when the friend slipped inside to take a FaceTime call with a business associate. Their voices drifted faintly from the house while Alyssa swung on a hammock, soaking up the sweet desert heat and contemplating a second marg.

"Oh crap, it's 3 o'clock — I have another meeting!" the friend shrieked from within the kitchen.

Then she came rushing back out, shoved the phone into Alyssa's hands, and demanded: "Here. Chat with my friend, Theo. I gotta go!”

Alyssa brought the phone up to her face, flustered and perplexed, and stammered: "Uhhh — hello? Whooo is this??"

However flustered Alyssa was, Theo was a hundred times that.

Because it was....the girl — that girl. He'd thought about her since she'd appeared in a little square on his screen months before. He'd thought about reaching out. He'd thought about Lake Tahoe, and strolling through farmers' markets hand-in-hand, and geeking out about crypto together. All just thoughts, until this moment.

To this day, no one knows why the friend handed Theo off to a stranger instead of simply saying goodbye. Not even the friend. She just shrugs and says, "I dunno — that's just what I thought to do."

Fate. Wearing a sundress. By a pool. In Phoenix.

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So — clearly, they hit it off. (I mean, we're here, sooo...)

Now, a small but important detail worth backing up for:

The mutual friend who so unceremoniously shoved that phone into Alyssa's hands? She was also one of the group leaders of that Sunday night crypto call. Which means Theo wasn't some random stranger on the other end of that FaceTime — he was someone she'd brought on to freelance for a separate crypto project she was running. Small world. Smaller than a Zoom grid, even.

So when Theo mentioned, somewhere in that first bewildered ten minutes of conversation, that he recognized Alyssa from the fund meeting, she found it interesting, mostly because she had zero memory of him. (He left out the part about the mental note. And the Lake Tahoe daydream. And farmers' markets. And the future wife thing. Smart man.)

They exchanged numbers as potential colleagues — Alyssa was considering jumping onto the same freelance project — and left it at that.

Or so she thought.

What followed was a FaceTime a day. Sometimes two. Each one running a half hour, an hour, longer. They made each other laugh. They got each other's idiosyncratic references and dry jokes. They had the same taste in everything that mattered and clashed in all the ways that turned out to be interesting — Alyssa loud and wired and all-in, Theo laidback, measured, a little quieter, a little harder to read. Yin, meet yang.

And then, about a week in, Theo floated an idea.

A wild idea. Impractical. Ballsy even. (Apparently, knowing her was already changing him for the better.)

See, he'd been tapped to attend a crypto conference in Miami — officially for the startup, unofficially for a good time. The conference was called, and we are not making this up, Shitcoin Conference 2021. And he wanted Alyssa to come.

He didn’t just ask. He campaigned. He made his case over multiple calls, video chats, texts, and emails across multiple days, dismantling her objections one by one like a very charming attorney. The world was still "on pause" kinda. She didn't have to go into work on the daily (not in the usual sense anyway — anything she needed to tend to, she could do so quickly from a laptop). Flights were cheap. She had the means. He had the accommodations, the tickets, the VIP access to the open bar, a built-in excuse to be there — it could even be a tax write-off, for crying out loud.

Each call, her "no" got a little softer. A little less convincing. Mostly to herself.

But before she said yes, she had one condition.

See, Alyssa's love language is play. Fun. Whimsy. Silliness. The kind of childlike, full-body laugh that makes you snort. And she needed to know if this guy had it in him. So she told him:

"OK, fine. But our first night out, we're wearing onesies. Silly animal onesies. I pick. What's your size?"

He paused a few seconds to process the strange request, and then a resounding: "YOU'RE ON."

The next day, a lemur onesie in size large arrived at his door in Nashville. Alyssa packed a green dinosaur one into her suitcase — already half-packed, since this was essentially a vacation within a vacation — and headed to Phoenix Sky Harbor, bound for Miami, stomach and heart doing things they hadn't done in a while.

Neither of them could tell you what the in-flight movie was or if they sat next to someone. All they felt and all they thought about was their rattling nerves. The good kind. The kind that means something big is coming.

At baggage claim, she spotted him first — sauntering toward her from across the terminal. And when he got close enough, she giggled and squealed, "It's you! Hi!" — because what else do you say?

He scooped her up. Hugged her tight. Gave her a hard smooch on the cheek, then the forehead.

And then, before either of them had a chance to be awkward about it, Alyssa turned around, pressed her back into him, held up her phone, and took a picture, because something inside told her she’d want that shot later. A snapshot of the first seconds. The first real hello. The first kiss — sort of — right there in the airport, two people who'd secretly, quickly, completely fallen for each other over FaceTime, about to walk into the most absurd first date imaginable.

A crypto conference. In Miami. In onesies.

Romance doesn’t always look the same for everyone. Sometimes it shows up in a lemur costume.

And Miami? Miami delivered.

It felt less like a city and more like a stage — like some unseen director had dressed the whole set just for them. The conference by day was a full-on playground: blockchain toys and tech demos at every booth, late-night dance parties that somehow made the crypto world feel cool, VR ventures through digital jungles, new foods around every corner, zipping around side-by-side on scooters, and even popping into a prom boutique to try on snazzy attire and pretend they were going to prom together. Their first real date was at a “creative cuisine” food truck, eating what can only be described as the most transcendently scrumptious, structurally unsound sandwiches either of them had ever attempted to shove in their mouths — zero grace, a total mess, absolutely perfect.

When tech talk and futurism got a bit much, they'd slip away to the beach to feel human again. No blockchain. No buzzwords. Just warm, teal water and cool, soft sand, and the comfortable ease between two people who are starting to feel like home to each other.

But the onesie night. Oh, the onesie night.

They ducked out of the conference early (don't tell their former sponsors) raced back to the hotel, and wrestled themselves into a green dinosaur and a lemur—tails and all—with the barely-contained energy of two children on Christmas morning. Alyssa may or may not have also packed a light-up glow wand. (She did.)

No plans. No destination. Just: let's see where the night takes us.

And the night was prepared.

At the very start, they stumbled upon a rogue shopping cart just sitting there on the sidewalk, abandoned, waiting — as if the director had written it in on page four. Theo didn't hesitate. He gestured grandly at the cart, "Your chariot, ma'lady." Alyssa, in her dinosaur onesie and glow wand, climbed in without a word of protest. And off they went — a lemur pushing a dinosaur through the streets of Miami at midnight, utterly unhinged, completely at home, ready to take on the town.

The night became a string of perfect, unplannable moments. They lay down together on a lush patch of grass, where in the middle of it, a gold star was embedded with a quote that read — "Grow old along with me, the best is yet to be" — and looked at each other and laughed, because obviously. Obviously, the director put that there. They made friends with a vegan hot dog vendor who bumped EDM jams from their speakers so they could bust a move in the sandy little lot under cafe lights. They shared stories and life experiences on a street curb with a security guard at 7-Eleven, D'Andre, who was genuinely delighted to engage in deep conversation with two strangers in animal onesies (they stayed in touch with him for some time after). They struck poses in front of towering, vivid murals that Miami is so known for. They had impromptu dance parties on street corners while cars honked in enthusiastic solidarity. They raided gas station shelves looking for the perfect midnight snack—a spread of candy and wine, a suspiciously large pickle and greasy chips, which they demolished on plastic patio furniture outside the hotel like two people who never heard of bedtime.

And then, somewhere in the night's small hours, when the sugar and giddiness had softened into something calmer and more tender, Alyssa began to read to him from her journal, at his request.

(Fair warning to the eye-rolling cynics—you may want to skim this next part.)

It was about her late mother. And somewhere in the middle of a particularly beautiful, heartbreaking excerpt, she looked up — and found Theo quietly wiping a tear from his eye.

"Man, I wish I could have met her. But I feel like I already know her through you," he said softly as he dried his cheek with a raised shoulder.

That was the moment. Right there. That was when Alyssa decided: this one should stick around.

They stayed up until the morning’s first clips of light splintered through the blinds, talking about everything, laughing until they cried about something else entirely, and slowly, without either of them naming it yet, falling into something that felt a lot like the rest of their lives.

And then, their perfect weekend had the gall to end. (Rude.)

They shuffled drearily through the airport on two hours of sleep — if that — quiet and heavy in the way that has less to do with exhaustion, more so with the dreaded goodbye looming ahead.

Alyssa’s boarding call came first. They looked at each other and winced with heartsickness. And then they hugged the way you hug someone you’re not ready to be done with yet and have no idea when you’ll see again — hard, and tight, and too long. Both of them welled up with thick tears as they let go, reluctantly, and turned to walk in opposite directions towards their gates.

That goodbye didn't stick for long.

By the time their planes had landed, they were already texting. By nightfall, they were on FaceTime. And by the following week, Alyssa was booked on a Southwest flight to Nashville — which, as it turns out, was the secret weapon of their entire summer.

Southwest, bless its flexible little heart, lets you change your return flight anytime, for free, no questions asked. So when a trip to Nashville was winding down, and neither was ready to say goodbye, Alyssa would simply...not. One call to rebook, and suddenly she had another week. Then another. Stays that were supposed to be a long weekend quietly stretched into two, three weeks at a time. She did this three or four times that summer, and not once did Southwest complain (Not sponsored, we promise.)

She was, it should be noted, uniquely positioned for this kind of romantic spontaneity — a month-to-month living agreement, remote work, plenty of savings, and zero compelling reason to be anywhere in particular. The universe had been setting this up for years, apparently.

Nashville came through. Of course it did. They did it all — distillery tours, escape rooms, live music (duh, it's Nashville), festivals of all sorts, day trips and weekend getaways, yoga workshops, new restaurants (Theo had a mission to show Alyssa all of his top picks for Nashville hot chicken joints), hidden gems, hole-in-the-wall bars with incredible bands, a particularly sweet trip to the famed milkshake place, Legendairy, for National Ice Cream Day, and ever-so-fittingly, multiple visits to farmer's markets hand-in-hand (the fruition of which was not lost on Theo).

They met each other's friends. They met each other's families. They made new friends everywhere they went, because that's what happens when these two are together — something about their combined energy, playful and warm and wide open, makes people want to pull up a chair.

They rendezvoused in Ft. Lauderdale, at his family's homes in upstate PA, and — perhaps most perfectly — he came to her at the Jersey Shore for her birthday weekend. Which, in summer, at the shore, is about as good as birthdays get.

In Atlantic City, they played like children in warm waves, slow danced on the boardwalk to busking saxophonists, squealed on the rides, and hit up the casinos (Theo is something of a gamblin' man), where Alyssa got "bankrolled" by a semi-famous stranger at the table — one Joey Gatto of Impractical Jokers notoriety — who then promptly put them on his show's VIP list. Just a normal Tuesday.

They watched dolphins from a boat in Cape May, dozens of them, some of them babies. Swung in the sky on parasails. Toured local farms and fed Duroc pigs. Explored an insect museum with a butterfly park. Sliced through cool summer winds on bikes along the coast. Stayed in a rotating cast of charming Airbnbs. Danced — a lot, always — and saw so many shows and performances and concerts, they lost count.

And in between all of it, they were never really apart. Nonstop texts, calls, FaceTimes, DMs, emails, Zoom meetings — now with both cameras very much on.

One summer. That's all it took. They were hooked.

But summers end. And reality, as it does, began clearing its throat.

By the time September rolled around, they were tired. Not of each other — never that — but of everything between them. The airports. The TSA lines. The suitcases. The feeling of watching someone's face on a screen when you want to be watching it across a dinner table.

Theo's lease in Nashville was ending. Something had to give.

The question was where. They both wanted somewhere new — a fresh start, a city that belonged to both of them equally, not a compromise but a choice. The only snag was timing: Alyssa couldn't leave New Jersey until Open Enrollment Period ended in January (her work was in health insurance). So wherever they were going, they'd have to wait. At least a little while.

In the meantime, Theo needed a plan. His job wasn't remote — his CEO was, in his words, old and set in his ways. So Alyssa did what Alyssa does: she encouraged him, prepped him, coached him. They ran mock conversations, talked strategy, and prepared him to walk into his boss's office and essentially say: I go remote, or I walk.

He took the leap. Marched into that office and said essentially just that (but nicer). Twice. After the second time, and some deliberation, they finally gave him the go-ahead.

With that settled, Theo packed his life into storage and moved up to Pennsylvania into a cousin's guest room — close enough to spend weekends with his new love, sometimes whole weeks — while they figured out the next move.

They spent the holidays attached at the hip, bouncing between families, celebrating Christmas and Hanukkah and New Year's, and life in general like the newly minted unit they were.

Florida had been the plan for their next chapter of cohabitation. Warm, beachy, sentimental for them (S. Florida after all). But then Alyssa's sister called with news: she needed to break her Phoenix lease soon — she was moving in with her fiancé — and couldn't afford to eat the security deposit or risk the blemish on her perfect tenant record.

And something clicked.

Wait. Why hadn't they thought of Phoenix?

The startup they were both freelancing for? Based in Phoenix. Their two mutual friends — the ones who'd inadvertently introduced them — lived in Phoenix. Alyssa's sister was in Phoenix, newly engaged and about to become a stepmom to four boys, and Alyssa was antsy to compete for the hallowed title of favorite aunt. A multitude of reasons were pulling them west.

And then there was the factor of travel. Because early on, they discovered how important travel was to them as individuals and now as a couple (a trio, really, along with their travel-loving fur-baby. Sage loves the open road). They knew they wanted to settle in a place that didn't just offer them a great place to live, but great places to easily escape to whenever the yearning for something new and different swept in.

And here's the thing about South Florida: you can't just road trip out of it, easy peasy. You drive and drive and drive, and you're still in Florida, and a lot of Florida is, well, just like the rest of Florida. But Phoenix? Within a few hours, some even just one, you have Sedona, Flagstaff, the Grand Canyon, Las Vegas, San Diego, Joshua Tree, the beaches of Mexico, Palm Springs, Tombstone, Lake Havasu, Patagonia, Jerome, Moab. A rich and wide plethora of completely different worlds, all within reach, especially with an RV, eventually to be procured in a not-too-distant future.

It wasn't even a hard decision once they saw it clearly. Phoenix was obvious. Phoenix was right.

Alyssa called the moving company.

Getting there was, naturally, an adventure.

A blizzard hit. Then another. The moving truck couldn't get through. They waited it out, holed up together in NJ, then PA, living out of suitcases — Theo had been living out of his since September, three months of suitcase life, a man of remarkable patience — until finally a window opened in mid-January and the truck got moving.

They packed up the car, stuffed it to the brim (and still needed roof bags to boot) with their things (So. Many. Things. Half of which were plants), loaded up Sage, honked goodbye to Theo's family, and hit the open road. Sage was especially elated, head and snout hanging out the rear window the second they pulled out of the driveway.

Their first cross-country road trip. The first of many, many more to come. They signed the lease on a Phoenix townhouse while still somewhere on the highway — toured it over FaceTime, site unseen, and said yes anyway. Because at this point, betting on the unknown was kind of their thing.

They arrived at the end of January. The moving truck came in mid-February. In the meantime, they furnished their home with Facebook Marketplace finds and IKEA runs and whatever treasures they could unearth on OfferUp, and slowly, deliberately, made it theirs.

They'd found a home in each other many long months before. They just finally had the same address to prove it.

Phoenix welcomed them like it had been waiting.

Their townhome sat tucked inside a little community that defied everything people think they know about Arizona — lush and green and shaded, with winding walkways and pools and parks and hiking trails right outside the door. Perfect for them. Perfect for Sage, who, as it turned out, was the greatest social director either of them had ever had. Walk a dog in a neighborhood several times a day, in heat and monsoons and everything in between, and you will meet everyone. And they did. Neighbors became friends. Friends became family. Friends' friends became friends. The circle kept expanding — dog parks, dinner parties, faith gatherings, group meetups, live events — until one day they looked around and realized they were surrounded by a whole community of kindred souls. The kind of people who show up for the big moments and also for a random Wednesday, just because.

They bought an old jalopy of an RV in 2023 — in a town called Surprise, which felt about right, since they'd only gone to look and somehow drove home as RV owners. Theo got to work fixing it up. Alyssa got to work making it a home — every gadget, every cozy touch, every not-strictly-necessary-but-absolutely-necessary creature comfort you could want on the open road. Together, the three of them—Alyssa, Theo, and their passenger princess, Sage—took it all over the map: Jackson Hole, the Grand Tetons, Yellowstone, slicing through Colorado, Utah, Nevada, and more. They drove it back east when they missed their families and couldn't take another ungodly Arizona summer, and stayed the whole season. They plan to keep doing exactly that.

Eventually, they outgrew their townhome and found a house — a 3-bedroom super “homey” house on a cul-de-sac (turns out, they are very much cul-de-sac people; IYKYK) just five minutes from their old neighborhood, so they didn't have to stray far from their people. They made it home the same way they make everywhere home: immediately, enthusiastically, and with excellent taste. They developed fast friendships with new neighbors (Sage was again an excellent conduit in that) and tacked on even more kindred souls to the clan they were building and calling their "chosen family".

The years filled up fast and full. Personal growth seminars and workshops, because growing together is one of their favorite things to do. Woodworking and ballroom dancing, resin art and candle-making, because so is making things. Tough Mudders (brutal) and themed races and volunteer work and physically-challenging endeavors (ask them about their foray into couples acro-yoga — it’s a hoot) and expos and festivals and trying everything, at least once. A Google Maps list of 270 (and counting) restaurants and cocktail lounges they are systematically, joyfully working their way through, because they are unapologetically enormous foodies.

They merged families until the word "merger" stopped making sense — because it wasn't a merger, it was just family. Her nieces and nephews call him Uncle Theo. Or “Tío Theo” to one in particular whose first language is Spanish (hiiii, Majo!), which they find particularly wonderful. He's claimed several of her closest friends as his own — a handful of the guys on his bachelor trip were hers first, which she considers a personal victory. Alyssa will tell you, only half-jokingly, that certain members of her family now like Theo more than they do her. She's made her peace with it. If you know Theo, you can’t blame them.

And then there was everything they got to witness and celebrate together — new babies arriving, friends graduating from cadet academy, other friends adopting a child, lifelong dreams being achieved, engagements and weddings, cancer-free announcements, dream jobs landed, big goals finally reached, first homes bought, friend vacations planned and well-executed, new pets adopted, celebration dinners had. They were surrounded by people doing the hard, beautiful work of building a life — and that circle held them to a higher standard too. Reminded them, again and again, what a celebrated and loving partnership could look like.

When you zoom out, it's been a rich life. Extraordinary, really. Full of peak experiences and deep belly laughs and good food and better people and impromptu dance sessions in random places or their own back yard and road adventures and parenting (er, spoiling) the cutest, best dog on earth and all the things that make a life feel well-lived.

But it hasn't always been easy. And that's worth emphasizing.

Because real love — the kind that endures all weather and seasons — isn't just the onesie nights and the road trips and the perfectly planned proposals and all the picture-perfect, peak moments. It's also the valleys. It's also the dips and the potholes and the unexpected, sometimes unwanted at first, detours. It’s the chaos and the whirlwinds and the proverbial dark nights of the soul. It’s the seasons that are hard and hazy, the ones where you don’t know what on earth to do next. The ones nobody puts on a wedding website or video montage, but that quietly hold everything else together.

They had them too. More than a few.

There was the sharp learning curve of going from vacation mode to real life — from a fun, exhilarating long-distance romance to suddenly sharing a home, a budget, a routine, and every unhealed corner of themselves with another human being. Their conflict resolution styles were, to put it generously, a work in progress. Their communication styles clashed in ways that took real effort, real humility, and real commitment to untangle.

They grieved people they loved. Alyssa lost a friend and mentor, far too suddenly, to a car crash. She witnessed the sudden decline of her first stepfather — Dr. Hillard Sharf, who'd helped raise her since she was seven — and the loss of him far too early, to Parkinson's Disease. They went through traumas around Sage's health and safety and nursed her back to wellness and to feeling secure again. They got news of other loved ones facing serious health battles and other worrisome challenges. They each carried old wounds that the closeness of real partnership has a way of surfacing, whether you're ready or not.

There were job losses and physical injuries and days that took mustering real grit just to get out of bed. There were hard, sad, scary, grit-building seasons that arrived uninvited and stayed longer than welcome.

And the simple little thing they did through all of the messy, complicated, harrowing ordeals was: stay. They soldiered through the toughest days by doing tougher work — going to counseling, individual and couples, reading or listening to relationship books and mental wellness podcasts and attending growth seminars and learning conflict resolution methods and utilizing the power of prayer and seeking wise counsel from clergy and having long, raw, honest conversations with friends who had walked this road before them and come out the other side (head nod here to those very first neighbor-friends they met in Phoenix, Michael and Lindsay, who became exactly that kind of compass and counsel for them).

And through all of it, one thing was never actually in question: that they would get through it together. That was an inarguable fact. It just sometimes needed reminding.

The challenges didn't break them. They built them.

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Somewhere in all of that wild, intense, hard, and happy living, they realized they'd already persevered through richer and poorer, through sickness and health, through highs and lows, and they always chose "to have and to hold" onto each other through it all. They knew it was time for what comes next for two people who know they can get through anything together — and want to forever. Which brings us to today. Well, almost. A certain question was needed for a bridge...

They had talked about it for years, of course. He'd declared she was the one by the end of their first month together, had said he'd "marry her tomorrow" way back then, and meant every word. But turning that feeling into an actual proposal — into a wedding, a real one, the kind they both always wanted — kept getting nudged aside by the next big thing to handle, the next chapter to get through first. Not the right time. Not yet.

Until January 25th, 2025. A Saturday evening. Around 7:30pm.

Theo had a question. Alyssa, in usual fashion, had the answer.

He'd gone to his best friend Matt — as he does for most things that matter — and Matt delivered. The reservation was at Maple & Ash, one of the most celebrated hot spots in the Phoenix-Scottsdale area. The kind of swanky joint where even the servers wear designer suits and the walls are draped in velvet and the florals look like they were designed for The Met Gala. Dark, sultry, classy, a little decadent. Exactly the vibe the occasion called for.

Alyssa was already smitten before they'd even ordered. She was mid-gasp, mid-sentence, babbling excitedly about how much she already loved it there, when the server glided over and slid an oversized menu larger than her torso directly in front of her.

"Wow, it's just all so incredi—"

She stopped.

The world stopped.

There, printed across the menu, overlaying the food and beverage choices, in large, unmistakable letters:

MARRY ME, ALYSSA!

Before she could even look up, her vision went blurry. When she finally peered down through wet, blobby tears, Theo was on a knee. Shaky. Teary-eyed. Saying something she wishes she could remember more clearly (it’s fuzzy; she was, as they say, “shook” in that moment), except for the part that mattered most: "I can't imagine my life without you."

That was enough. That was everything.

"Yes. Of course I will!!"

The room erupted. Applause, cheers, strangers on their feet. Servers and managers appeared with drinks and shots (on the house!) and seafood towers and desserts galore. People came over to hug them. Strangers offered to take their photo. And two tables down — as if the director were back at it again — a family was celebrating their patriarch and matriarch's 50th wedding anniversary. Fifty years. They shared their champagne and their joy and told Alyssa and Theo they hoped to see them back at that very table someday, celebrating one of their own.

The rest of the evening felt like a party thrown in their honor by the universe. Because, honestly, it kind of was.

Which brings us here. A little over a year later, deep in the throes of wedding planning — equal parts intense and thrilling and surreal.

And whatever came of that crypto hedge fund that started everything? Well, sadly, it went belly up. The coin crashed and burned. Never recovered. Theo and Alyssa, between the two of them, lost many thousands. A mortifying amount, really, and let's just leave it at that.

Ouch.

Nevertheless, they hit the jackpot in another way—a way that made them richer than any financial holding could have. They may have lost a boatload of shekels, but they gained each other. A forever love. A best friend. A partner to do life with. And they carry with them everything and everyone they've loved and lost along the way.

Turns out the best investment they ever made wasn't in crypto at all.
It was in each other.

So it started with a crypto meeting, a thousand miles and many states between them, and some years later, in a new state together, thousands of miles from where it all began, ended with a ring. Except it’s really just the beginning...

Kinda gives a new meaning to the term diamond hands, doesn't it?

...The End. But really just the beginning...

We hope to continue celebrating our story along with you in June! And to those who've read this beginning to end, thank you! It fills our hearts to share our journey with you.

(P.S. the next thumbnail is our story in video form. 12 minutes capturing our first year full of adventures together!)