Rachel Dawson, A Southern Wake Couple
It’s 2009, we’re all rocking bubble hemmed dresses and listening to Boom Boom Pow by the Black Eyed Peas living our best life and enjoying our 18 year old youth! Hunter and I both head to East Carolina University as freshmen. He comes from a small North Carolina town called Fuquay-Varina and I’m on my way down to school from Richmond, VA! We both are moving into Fletcher Dorm at ECU. We met on move in day where there was an instant spark from that day in 2009; we’ve been together ever since. Fast forward 6 years to 2014, when Hunter and I are living in Cary, NC. We’ve been together 6 years and let’s just say I was impatiently waiting for a proposal. On New Year’s Eve we went to a gala at the Natural Sciences Museum downtown. At midnight in front of the entire gala, Hunter got down on one knee and proposed. I, of course, was over the moon! Our wedding day was in December of 2015 and was the most magical day. We just celebrated our six year wedding anniversary in December and had our first baby in October of 2020!
Jess Barbour, Raleigh Based Actress
Does this look like an audition? It did to me! Ryan Ladue and our agent got together to create an audition for a jewelry store that we needed to tape before we left for Asheville. We did the first take, talking to camera, but Ryan said he wanted to do one more. I hit the record button,we started and then Ryan took out the ring. I was so confused. Was this part of the audition? Then I realized it was real, the proposal anyway. We’re engaged!
Amanda Schlosnagle, Owner, Pose Selfie Studio
My business partner and now fiancé, Nick, got engaged in June 2021! He popped the question during our trip to the North Carolina Zoo! I attached a picture! The elephants posed perfectly for the picture!
Photo Credit: Amanda Schlosnagle
Savannah Hopps, Owner, NEIGHBORHOOD barre Durham
Austin and I met and we started dating almost immediately in March 2016. It was wild that we hadn’t met before because we went to the same middle school, grew up only a couple of miles apart and had a lot of mutual friends. I always said no holiday engagement – it just wasn’t my speed, and he delivered.
When I said I had ZERO idea he was going to propose (we had talked about getting engaged and married, but I thought he’d wait until he was done with school), I had zero idea. Every year, we would go to Drew & Ellie Holcomb’s You & Me concert around Valentine’s Day. On Feb. 15, 2018 walking to the concert, Austin got down on one knee and proposed. One of my best friends that lives in Nashville was there taking photos, and I was completely and totally surprised. We got to enjoy the whole show together, newly engaged. And I was surprised AGAIN with an engagement party set up by friends and family after we got home from the concert!
We got married on May 26, 2019. In March, we’ll celebrate six years together and three years married in May.
Shannon Cueva, RALEIGH DATE SPOTS
My husband and I met freshman year of college in Pyscology class by a mutual friend and sat together the entire semester. We became good friends (little did he know I was always interested in him) and the end of that semester I transferred schools. After I transferred schools we continued to stay in contact through FaceTime, texting, and Instagram DM. I wrote him a few letters too ;). My love for him grew once I transferred schools and continued to like him for 2 years. We dated other people but all the while, still stayed in contact. The summer before senior year of college (2018) I had an internship in New York City. He came to visit me that summer and we realized there was something there (even though I always knew ;))! After that weekend in NYC, we started talking all the time and became official a few months later. I moved to NYC after I graduated and we began to do long distance for 2 years. Fast forward to the August 2020, He proposed to me in one of our favorite spots in NYC. The Belvedere Castle in Central Park. We got married in May 2021 and have been happily married since!
Meghan Barrett, Accountability Coach & Podcaster
“I was talking with my friend about how I thought he was a cool guy and hoped he would text, but I was also relatively sure I gave him the wrong number! So, the obvious next step was to stalk him on social media, but we didn’t know his name! Tyler: I followed some “wisdom” from my roommate to wait at least a week so I didn’t seem desperate. And I didn’t even have social media at the time; Meghan made my first FaceBook profile. Luckily she
didn’t lie to me and I finally texted otherwise that could have been the end of the story!”
“But it wasn’t! It was the beginning of our story over 14 years ago.”
