How We Met
Riley and I met through a mutual friend, Megan. I was living with Megan at the time and she invited me to her New Year’s Eve party back home. I went to the party hoping to have some fun with my roommate and did not have any other expectations. Soon after I got there, I was introduced to Riley and he immediately started flirting with me. We talked and he flirted with me all night, but I truly thought it would just be a fun New Years’ Eve party fling. The next morning he added me on Facebook before I even drove the 10 minutes back to my parents’ house. About a week later he followed me on Instagram and I messaged him asking why he was adding me on everything. I had gone back to college but we continued messaging for a couple of weeks and he finally asked me if I wanted to go on a date with him to get breakfast. We started spending more time together on weekends and he asked me to be his girlfriend on February 12th.
How They Asked
We decided to take advantage of the low airline fares and take a trip during my week of break from school. We started planning everything pretty last minute and a couple of weeks before we left, I tried to cancel because I got nervous about Covid-19. Riley kept trying to reassure me that everything would be fine and that we should still go. On our last full day, we were planning to hike in North Cascade National Park. Riley was pretty adamant about choosing the hike we did and I really didn’t care so I thought nothing of it. He also kept asking me if my friend Ellie wanted to go hiking with us and I could not figure out why he was so insistent that my friend came with us. I never ended up asking her because I didn’t want to interrupt the plans she had for her trip.
Once we got to the trailhead we met two women who happened to be going up the same trail as us. They ended up catching up to us not too far into the trip and that’s when Riley told them what he was planning. I was still oblivious to what was going on because I was leading us up the narrow trail at this point. We eventually made it to the top of the hike and were admiring the views all around us. One of our new friends was taking some pictures and I noticed her so I made a funny face.
Little did I know, she was in position and ready for what was coming next. I was looking at the mountains and turned around to find Riley getting down on one knee. I was completely speechless and so surprised. I had no idea Riley was going to ask me to marry him and I completely missed any signs. Looking back there were so many things that could have tipped me off, but I am so glad that he was able to surprise me! I was completely speechless and couldn’t find any words! All I was able to do was nod my head yes!
