How We Met
A brief tale and somewhat backwards love story of an unlikely match: I (Deb), an earnest, blonde bundle of energy from Southern California and Drew, a humble, burly, quirky jack of all trades from Anchorage, Alaska.
Drew and I met in Alaska 3 and a half years ago. He was also a former division 1 decathlete, commercial fisherman, gifted writer, four years older than me and way out of my league. I thought he was exceptionally attractive, funny, and an amazing storyteller. He thought I looked familiar and kept staring at me. We didn’t talk much for the next 3 years but continually kept tabs on each other via social media. We call this the “marinating period.”
During my junior year at the University of Tennessee, Drew was finishing up his first year of medical school in the Caribbean when he saw a a truck drive by with an advertisement for a Caribbean coffee drink. The picture of the woman holding the coffee apparently reminded him of me, so he proceeded to chase down the vehicle to snap a photo of it to send to me. An excuse to talk to me? Maybe. The jury is still out on that.
What started as a innocent Facebook message turned into writing each other novels about our lives and how we see the world, Skyping for hours upon end, and agreeing to be his girlfriend while in separate countries.
how they asked
His precious family flew me out to Alaska for my Christmas break and had a trip planned to cross country ski to a remote cabin in Denali National Park.
We decided to take advantage of the beautiful sunlight and hike to Cascade Falls which required us to trek across a 1.8 mile long lake with snow up to our knees.
After an arduous 8 mile hike, we headed back to our cabin and made our way across the lake. The view was spectacular and I told Drew we needed to take a picture. He agreed and said he wanted his gun to be in the picture and got on one knee to search through his backpack. I didn’t think anything of it as I surveyed the glory around me until I heard, “can you hold this?”
He placed a black box in my frosted glove. My jaw dropped. He told me he loved me and asked me to be his forever. After jumping up and down, I grabbed his face and kissed the crap out of it. I then realized I forgot to say yes so I said it emphatically after about a minute.
My entire body was frozen but my heart could not have been fuller or warmer. I encourage everyone to fall in love. But good luck finding another Drew Edwards.
