January 17th, 2026 will be the beginning of our happily ever after but to really understand how two strangers born almost 9500 miles apart crossed paths and shared a love so special, we need to go on a little journey.

A charming, bubbly and theatrical youngest daughter from Dallas who is the apple of her family’s eye and an introspective, laid back oldest son from India may seemingly not have a lot in common. However, since the day we met at a restaurant in Addison, TX we have learned how truly God created us for each other. His will was the driving force behind what feels like a serendipitous encounter that has blossomed into a once in a lifetime love. Gracie and I met on a dating app called Hinge (not sponsored but maybe we should be for this free plug). I had only been on the app for a few weeks and was really contemplating uninstalling it. I didn't know if it was for me and I was sure that I was not going to find love on an app. Then late one Tuesday night in May, I got a notification that someone had liked one of my pictures. I checked my notification the next day and to my surprise, the like was from the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. She seemed really cool, classy and cultured. The app’s algorithm thought that we would be “Most Compatible” with each other (great call by AI) so I messaged her and our story began.

After a few days of chatting on the app, I knew that I would really like to meet Gracie and find out more about her, so I asked her out. After what I now know to be a hesitant yes, Gracie and I met up. As soon as I saw her walk through the doors into that restaurant in Addison, my world was lit up. The thing we connected on most was our love for God, our families and our desire for adoption some day. The date was going so well that I didn’t want it to end, and thought of a few things we could do to extend our time together on the fly.

I loved how Gracie’s face lights up when she talks about the things she truly loves. I noticed it at first when she was telling me about her nieces and I realized how much she loved them. I saw a similar glimmer in her eyes when she told me about her first love, Taylor Swift. At the end of the night, I asked Gracie to send me a playlist of her favorite Taylor Swift songs and that was the first text she ever sent me. Her “favorites” ended up being seven hours worth of music. I promised to listen to it (spoiler: I did listen to all seven hours of that playlist before our next date six days later). We hugged goodbye after a five hour first date and I think we both knew that there was something special about our time together.

I would say our third date was a defining moment of our story. I had planned a picnic at the Dallas Arboretum for us and knew I wanted to really impress Gracie. I pulled out all the stops, including baking strawberry macarons for her. I worked really hard and with the help of a good friend, managed to get half a dozen decent looking macarons for our picnic. I picked her up and we chatted the whole way there. I even flexed my trilingual language skills to tell her how pretty she looked that day in English, Hindi, and Malayalam in an attempt to impress her. We got to take in the beauty of the Arboretum, do some people watching by White Rock Lake, and get beyond surface level conversations. No one would look at the way we walked, talked, and laughed together and guess that we had only been on a few dates. It was so easy to talk to her. She saw right through me sometimes. She asked me questions that broke down walls I had built up for a long time. It was on this walk around the Arboretum among the blossoming flowers that our love bloomed. We continued this date to a record store nearby, and then later to an ice cream shop. I could tell that Gracie felt hesitant about us or our future at times but I had no doubts. I am a glass-half-full kind of person, and my glass has been overflowing since the day I met Gracie.

Almost a year later, back at the Dallas Arboretum, I asked Gracie to marry me. Asking her in the moment was the easy part… the harder part was hiding my plans for the proposal from the person I told everything to for so long. I planned the whole thing 6 weeks in advance and went to great lengths to keep Gracie in the dark. I lied, I turned off my location at times and as awful as those moments felt, it was all worth it to see her so surprised when I asked her. In order to get her there, I asked her out for another picnic at the Arboretum to commemorate our third date. I told her that we might take some pictures and go out for a nice lunch afterwards, and to make sure she was dressed up. I had no idea where to hide the ring box, so I improvised and tucked it into the waistband of my pants and wore a loose shirt to cover it up. I guessed correctly that Gracie would have some inclination that I would propose that day… she gave me hugs and patted me on that thigh a couple of times on the drive to the Arboretum seemingly looking for some kind of box. I know now that she texted her friend that she didn't think the proposal was going to happen that day because I “didn't have a ring on my person”… mission accomplished! I probably sounded so weird and nervous all day. Once we got to “the spot”, I blacked out. I was trying to remember all the things I wanted to say and I started walking slower than usual and she asked me “why are you walking so slow?” and that snapped me right out of a haze. I turned towards her and said, “I need to ask you something”, and I told her how much I love her and how I could not imagine my life without her, and I got down on one knee and asked her to marry me. Her saying yes was the best moment of my life. That feeling was second only to knowing that she was fully surprised, and that I got her so good.

God has truly blessed us by bringing us into each other’s life and showing us how perfectly we fit with each other. We always like to say we have the same heart, and different brains. She is the love of my life and I can’t wait to see what marriage holds for us.

In order for me to accurately tell you our love story, I’ll have to go back a bit further…

I’d like to start at the first monumental heart shift I can recall in my life. 5th grade, sitting by myself on the playground during recess. The first time I noticed that all of the other kids were playing together while I was daydreaming alone. Up until this moment, I felt perfectly content entertaining myself with my own imagination.

I was the only child living in my home at that time with two amazing parents. I had big sisters who came home on holiday breaks, I was very involved in our local church, and I was always surrounded by tons of neighborhood kids that I played with often. I wasn’t a lonely kid then, but around the age of 10 or 11, I found myself wanting more connection, more understanding, and more companionship with my peers.

It wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be. The harder I tried to make friends, the less friends I seemed to have. I felt like I was weird, annoying, too much, different, an outcast. The world felt loud and confusing and the social norms and rules that seemed so obvious to everyone else were completely foreign to me. As I got older and my world got bigger, I did make lots of incredible friends who made me feel seen and loved and taught me about true friendship. But the anxiety, insecurity, and people pleasing nature that had taken root in my heart lingered even when the loneliness didn’t.

Through God’s goodness and faithfulness, a lot of renewal and growth happened in my life during early adulthood, but a few burdens that remained were nagging social anxieties and the feeling of being misunderstood by most of the people around me. I think feeling misunderstood can lead to accepting or expecting less than what you deserve out of relationships and that was very true of me for as long as I can remember.

All of that context leads me to the part of my story where another monumental heart shift was about to take place. It was Spring of 2024, I had a Hinge date scheduled with a guy named Jeremy, and my expectations were low. Like, really, really low… So low I almost cancelled the date because I thought I’d have more fun at home ordering UberEats and watching Parks and Rec on my own than giving another stranger from the internet an evening of the same old small talk.

This guy seemed nice enough though. His messages expressed genuine interest and curiosity. He took the initiative to ask me on a real date, and he made a reservation at a place that was convenient for me to get to (may not sound like much to some, but the online dating scene in your mid-to-late 20s can be BLEAK), and he even followed up with me when I stopped responding (Spoiler alert: I almost ghosted the love of my life!) to let me know he’d be at the agreed upon place at the agreed upon time and he was looking forward to seeing me. All good signs, but I was feeling unusually pessimistic.

Our date took place at a restaurant called Stirr in Addison, Texas at 6:30pm on a rainy Saturday in May. I didn’t do my hair, I was wearing a dress I didn’t love, and I never thought I’d see the guy I was meeting again. I was late. I couldn’t find parking. I was over it before I even got through the door. When I eventually walked in, he got up from his seat and walked over to greet me. As cheesy as this sounds, he took my breath away. He had a beautiful smile, extremely kind eyes, and I really liked his outfit.

We sat down and immediately started talking and could not stop. I think we had two different waiters come over three or four different times before we finally shut up long enough to look at the menu. I was really anxious about what to order for some reason and could not decide between a couple of items on the menu (salmon and alfredo pasta). I was worried I wouldn’t like either or they’d be too spicy or something. It probably came across as really weird and neurotic but Jeremy didn’t seem to mind. I finally went with the salmon and Jeremy surprised me by ordering the alfredo pasta and told me (a complete stranger) that he’d switch with me if I didn’t like mine… I have since learned that Jeremy really dislikes alfredo pasta and he would never order that for himself in a million years!

I learned a lot about him on that first date. We talked about his life in India, his experiences moving to the USA and starting high school here, his family and super close knit group of friends, his engineering job, his faith. We could not possibly have been more different on paper. Jeremy is extremely academic and I barely made it to my classes in college. Jeremy is very calm and thoughtful and I am high strung and impulsive. Jeremy is a saver, I am a spender. Jeremy is very orderly, and my apartment usually looks like it has been hit by a tornado. Jeremy loves sports, and I love theater. But the more time I spent with him, the more the same I felt like we were. The more understood and at peace I felt in his presence.

A couple of hours into the date, I excused myself to the restroom and while I was gone Jeremy was researching things to do nearby. Like me, he wasn’t ready for our date to end. I had mentioned Roro’s Baking Company (the business my older sister started with our grandmother selling her delicious cinnamon rolls) and a few of the stores that stocked them. He told me he was going to a party with his friends later and he wanted to buy some to bring and asked if I wanted to walk over to Whole Foods with him. I said yes, of course and sparks continued to fly in the freezer aisle as I pointed out the display and proudly showed him Roro’s picture on the back of the pan. It was the best first date of my life. I smiled like an idiot the whole way home.

The cinnamon rolls were a hit at the party and Jeremy asked me out for our second date that very night. And then he did the same thing with our third date, which was a beautiful picnic at the Dallas Arboretum. Every date he planned had my likes and interests in mind. The more time I spent with Jeremy, the more I felt like we were kindred spirits. He was patient in a way I had never seen before. He was so intentional, communicative, gentle, kind, and tender with me. He never left me guessing or wondering how he felt about me, because he always just told me. The whole thing felt shocking and too good to be true, and he was patient with me as I worked through these doubts and unbelief that something so genuinely good and right could have found me.

From the very beginning, his consistency and love has never wavered. He has shown up for me during every high and low life has thrown our way. He carried me and supported my family during the devastating loss of my grandmother, Roro. He tells me how much he loves me, how beautiful I am, and a million other reasons why I am the best every single day. He sees my needs and meets most of them before they even register in my brain. He takes care of me with that same patient, kind, healing, compassionate love I got a small glimpse of in the beginning. I could write pages and pages about how rare and exceptional Jeremy is. How much integrity and depth of character he possesses. How his love for me has enabled me to love myself more. How smart and hardworking he is. How he truly is the greatest person I have ever known.

A little over a year after that special day at the arboretum, he took me back for another picnic. This time around, we reminisced on our beautiful year together and at the end of our walk, he asked me to be his wife. I said yes to spending the rest of my days with my gentle, beautiful, one of a kind man who feels like home. I am so ready and excited to begin our life together and I am so thankful that I get to walk alongside someone who makes such a loud, scary, confusing world feel so peaceful and safe. A man who makes me feel seen, known, connected, and understood.

Our story has taught me to see the beauty in the simple things in life and it reminds me that God’s plans and designs wildly surpass our own hopes and ideas for our lives. The road that led me to where I am felt very long and at times difficult but as I look back on my life, I know every experience I have has prepared me to be the right partner for Jeremy. I know that every hurt I have experienced enables me to appreciate the beauty and rarity of this love that we share, and reminds me to never take our relationship for granted.

As we eagerly await January 17, 2026, it is not lost on me what a blessing it is to know and love Jeremy Samuel, and I am thankful every single day that God chose me to be his wife.