Stephanie&Kevin

...are tying the knot!

Our Story, as told by Kevin

Stephanie skipped toward the café, running slightly late to meet with her friend Wenjing, a classmate from undergraduate days at Duke. Little did she know, it was a setup...

Earlier, Wenjing had also invited her medical school classmate Kevin for lunch on this special day. However, this was not just any lunch gathering. Wenjing—with a matchmaker's hidden agenda—had earlier dropped hints to Kevin about a friend who had returned to Duke as a Ph.D. student after a stint at Microsoft. “She is really great and I think you two would be really compatible.” So it was agreed Kevin would innocently 'just happen' to tag along for this lunch. It was there Kevin and Stephanie first set eyes on each other and the seeds of love were sown.

Later that week, Kevin stepped onto the parking garage shuttle to find the bus empty save for one person: Stephanie. Eyes sparkled, smiles flashed, flowers bloomed, birds sang and the sun's light was somehow more vivid. After that all-too-brief meeting, it was agreed that Kevin would later join Stephanie for a session of rock climbing, and from this common interest grew a love as solid as granite.

Years later, Stephanie and Kevin kept their relationship strong despite the distance separating them with Stephanie hard at work completing her Ph.D. in Durham, NC and Kevin buried in residency in Ann Arbor, MI. In a rare alignment of vacation schedules, they took a trip to the Red River Gorge in Kentucky for a chance to rock climb and bask in nature. Yet again, Stephanie was unaware this was a setup...

Kevin, months earlier, had commissioned a ring to present to Stephanie. It incorporated qualities that formed the foundation of their relationship: beauty in simplicity, joyfulness in uniqueness, and most of all purple (Stephanie's favorite color). Having managed to avoid misplacing the ring in the vast wilderness yet keep Stephanie from discovering the surprise, the moment came on the last day of climbing. Stephanie had just completed leading a 100-foot route that reached the limits of their rope, performing perfectly (an 'on-sight' as the climbers say), even dodging a few menacing spiders along the way. After reaching the safety of the ground, Kevin reached into his pack and presented the ring to Stephanie.

He asked Stephanie if she would be willing to spend the rest of her life with him, filled with fun, silliness and adventure.

She said “Are you joking?”

Then she began to cry.

Then she paused take a picture of Kevin down on one knee.

Finally, she took the ring and said “Yes!”

The rest, as they say, is history...