How it began
Her story…
Not long after being hired to work as a barista at a coffee shop called Prevail, I met Andrew. The main thing I remember from our first conversation is that we talked about mission trips and traveling, which got my attention.
After several interactions, Andrew showed up as I was closing Prevail one day and asked me on a date. I was pretty surprised, but I said yes. However, I then realized I didn’t know his age. I knew he was older than me, but I didn't know exactly how much older. After some stalking, I realized his age, and I freaked out! Little did I know he was doing the exact same thing and was freaking out because he didn’t realize how young I was.
We ended up not going on that date, and I didn’t see Andrew again until several months later. When he started coming back to Prevail, it was clear that we were just friends and nothing was going to happen between us…or so we thought. After months of regular interactions at Prevail, which typically involved lengthy conversations, we developed a solid friendship.
For a while, I told myself that I “couldn’t” like him, and he was telling himself the same thing about me. However, around Christmas is when we both, unknowingly at the same time, started to reconsider.
Andrew designed a poster for a latte art throwdown that my friends and I were planning on going to, and I remember thinking it was a big deal because he was meeting a lot of my friends, plus it was one of the first times we would be hanging out outside of the typical coffee shop limits. I had no clue how much he was going to talk to us, but he ended up hanging with us the whole night! After that, my friends told me he definitely liked me.
Over the next few weeks, our communication gradually increased, and eventually (after much thought and prayer on both of our ends), Andrew asked me out again, while we were sitting in a coffee shop, of course. Our first date was on National Pizza Day, and we ended up eating pizza from two different restaurants, much to my excitement. Since then, we have eaten a lot more pizza and have visited a lot more coffee shops, and I can’t wait to do that together for the rest of our lives!
The exact place we met!
Many of our lengthy conversations took place in these seats.
Andrew’s poster he designed.
Very thankful for Prevail for bringing us together!
His Story…
I remember the first time I met Hanna Ray. I was getting coffee at Prevail when she was working and making the little small talk that people do at coffee shops. I mentioned that I just got back from London and then she said the last country she’d been to was a country in North Africa for a missions summer. I remembered this moment because she had traveled to more places than me and was very passionate about missions.
Several months later I asked her out to a Wilco concert that I had tickets for. It was a bit of a last minute asking, and she had already planned to be out of town for that weekend, but I got her real name (I was saying Anna Ray) and number. I quickly realized with the correct name that she graduated college fairly recently, and I wasn’t sure if this was a good idea now that the concert situation was not happening.
I didn’t know how to communicate why I didn’t call back and waited several months before finally calling to say “Hello, remember me? I’m 39 years old.” But the conversation was actually really fun and we talked about all kinds of things for over an hour.
I started going back to the coffee shop more and more. She was in seminary, so we always had something interesting to talk about, deep questions and real life topics.
That Christmas I got really sick and missed hanging out with family on Christmas Day. I ran into Hanna Ray accidentally right before New Years and something felt different. I think we both had thought more about what if our friendship could actually be something more. I was still slow to jump in because of the age gap and that it wasn’t the typical situation. After a month or so of texting and talking on the phone it got to a point where I asked her out again but this time for totally different reasons: because I knew her really well and wanted to begin dating.
And the rest is history!!!!
The concert that she never saw.
The coffee shop sign I made to impress her.
One of our early dates at an Auburn baseball game.
Us eating a huge pizza.