I actually met Art in HIGH SCHOOL (but Art did not meet me - can you believe?) When I was a senior in High School I went to Stanford Admit weekend (a big weekend put together for people who had just been accepted). I was randomly placed in Art’s little dorm of 50 in the same room as one of Art’s closest girl friends, Emma (friend who was a girl - NOT girlfriend). During that weekend I got to meet some of Art’s best friends, but not Art, until one evening while I’m in the middle of a conversation with a guy, Art walks down the hall. Immediately I was like WHO IS THAT GUY he has a beautiful face. The (clearly jealous) guy told me “Oh that’s Art, he’s such a player”. Those words stayed with me for 2-3 years. So weekend ends, I go home to Texas and I do what any excited prospective Stanford attendee in 2006 does - make a FACEBOOK account. Because Stanford Facebook then had like 100 people total Art’s face shows up. Remembering he’s a “player” I poke him (as a joke duh) and Art follows up with a friend request almost immediately. I remember thinking - see what a creep (double standard).

Fastforward 2 years (during those 2 years I forgot about Art’s existence) I see Art around campus. We are both lost trying to find the same class. Turns out we’re both Econ majors and enrolled in the same Macroeconomic class. Art sits next to me in his grey baggy sweatpants. He keeps giggling to his friend and tapping his pen, I remember thinking “and he’s a dumb athlete too”. My bad impression of him further cemented. However, fate kept bringing us closer together - one quarter I kept ending up at SAE (Art’s fraternity) because my best friend was dating a guy there and one night at 2am after a party I find myself in the kitchen, drunkenly eating someone’s leftover birthday cheesecake, and there’s ART just hovering around. I pretended to misremember his name (call him Ray which in my teenage mind was ‘emasculating’ sorry to the Rays out there) and gave him stolen cheesecake, which he happily ate though now I know he doesn’t like cheesecake. These small instances are enough for Art to start asking me on dates, which I keep rejecting until one day I said yes (tbh I don’t have a good story here other than he impressed me with his meticulous notes in a finance class called ‘Money & Banking’).

We went to the movies for our first date (Art wanted to watch Slumdog Millionaire which I deemed too ‘romantic’ and suggested Gran Torino which turns out Art actually wanted to watch more) We’ve been inseparable since that day (January 22, 2009). The rest is history!