Our Love Story
Brandon and Kate met on Hinge in December, 2024. Kate found the slew of eligible bachelors she was offered to be very ineligible, so she forked over $3.99 to send a “rose” hoping it would beat the algorithm and serve up some better candidates.(Brandon would like it on the record that it was Kate who gave him a rose and not the other way around and Kate would like it on the record that this is not the flex he thinks it is).
Kate and Brandon started chatting and quickly learned that they both grew up in the San Fernando Valley, just a stone’s throw away from each other all their lives without ever meeting. They had mutual friends, similar home town favorites, and 90's-valley childhood nostalgia to match. They felt instantly familiar.
After a week of witty banter, they planned their first date: a hike in Griffith Park.
Brandon cites this as the moment he fell in love. And for the record, they did grab a drink after the hike. And then another, as Brandon decided he'd be very, very late to pickleball. (Sucker).
Things moved quickly, but intentionally, after that - both of them at a place in life with a clear idea of what they wanted and the fortitude to get it (it's amazing what a high EQ and solid communication skills will get you). Their dates were filled with big questions and long conversations about everything under the sun. Their third date was at Brandon's parent's house (WITH his parents, no less) making homemade pasta and tasting tequila. It was that strange time right after the holidays where everything feels kind of quiet and still, made even stranger by the devastating LA fires. The city was quite literally on fire all around them but they were locked in on each other (draMAAAAtic, but like, kind of true).
When I tell you that Brandon proposed, I mean he PROPOSED. The man designed an elaborate Kate-and-Brandon-themed escape room involving scattered puzzle pieces, a giant crossword, photos that needed to be placed in chronological order, a password protected website complete with videos of family and friends sending their blessings to the couple. All of this leading to a beautiful flower-and-candle-lined scene on his parent's deck overlooking the lake, where he asked Kate to marry him. Competition, puzzles, sentimentality, words of affirmation, family. He really said, "to be loved is to be known."
Some might use the word "whirlwind" to describe the year that followed. In certain ways, this is true. It was fast-paced, a rush of events, overwhelming at times, logistically. But whirlwinds are chaotic in nature. Dangerous, even. And that just wasn't the case. The real word on everybody's lips was "easy." Like a carpet rolled out before them, each step fell into place and felt right. They were in each other's lives, and in each other's families, like they had always been there. Like they had always been just 10 miles away in the San Fernando Valley somewhere, waiting for Kate to give Brandon a stupid fucking rose.