Darryl and Stephen met in 2018 while Darryl was Associate Director of the Minority Engineering Program at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, and while Stephen was Assistant Research Scientist in the Engineering Education Transformations Institute at the University of Georgia.

Darryl and Stephen both attended a conference on diversity in engineering, called the Collaborative Network for Engineering and Computing Diversity. (Picture above is from the same conference 1 year later in 2019.) The conference was in Crystal City, Virginia. It was the first year the conference was held and it was intended to bring people in staff support roles like Darryl with people in education research roles like Stephen.

On the last night of the conference we met at an awards ceremony where Darryl was getting honored as the next elected president of NAMEPA (National Association of Multicultural Engineering Program Advocates-- sorry for all the acronyms in the story!). Darryl says he had seen Stephen present at the conference before that, too.

The next day in the conference wrap up, Darryl and Stephen kept being introduced to each other by other mutual friends-- so both the conference and the fact that our mutual friends thought we should know each other felt a bit like fate. Stephen was hanging around to see if Darryl wanted to talk more, but he was very busy as president and Stephen went to go see his family in Maryland. Darryl invited Stephen to come back down for breakfast later that week and we had our first official date at a bad diner in Crystal City. I remember the conversation went deep-- we talked about how we grew up and our values over eggs with American cheese on them...

We kept in touch Summer of 2018, as Darryl fielded a job offer to leave Purdue to go to Ohio to be an Assistant Professor, and Stephen interviewed for a job at Purdue. At the time, it didn't seem like the two of us would ever be in the same place at the same time. We saw each other at another conference in Salt Lake City, Utah and texted a lot.

Things started progressing towards where Stephen was accepting the job in Purdue and Darryl was not yet leaving for Ohio. Stephen went up and visited Darryl while he picked out an apartment in town.

Stephen moved to Lafayette, Indiana on July 28th 2024. The photo (above) is from a hike around Indiana shortly thereafter. Within 1 month after moving, Darryl and Stephen were official, exclusive, and spent all their time at one or the other's place. Their first trip together was Stephen's best friend Christina's wedding, Labor Day weekend.

They spent their Fall going on lots of hikes in state parks across Indiana. They saw Beyonce in concert in Chicago. When it got snowy, they did puzzles-- Darryl made Stephen puzzles from photos that commemorated the hikes they did. Darryl met Stephen's family in October and more at Christmas, Stephen met Darryl's family at Christimas. They traveled to Cancun to get a break from the Indiana cold.

Pretty quick within our first year together, Darryl and Stephen had to make some big decisions about their commitment to one another. If Darryl and Stephen both wanted tenure track faculty jobs, it could mean Darryl jeopardizing his very good job offer in hand, and complicating the case for either of us getting hired individually. The decision was pretty easy-- we wanted to go somewhere we could both have faculty jobs or else we each didn't want to go.

It was a high pressure year but we both interviewed at Florida International University and were offered faculty jobs. We went to a June conference in Tampa, Florida and drove down to Miami to look at apartments.

We started our faculty jobs in 2019. We lived in an apartment in Coral Gables, which is a small residential city. We were both busy and excited about our work, but we also made time to go out and explore Miami restaurants, concerts, and beaches. We went on our first (and last?) cruise to Cozumel, Mexico in February 2020.

We started looking at buying a house. Covid happened in March 2020 made that feel more urgent, so we finalized our home purchase near South Miami June 2020.

Covid was a challenge for everyone in the world, and we had to adjust to teaching online, having few people to talk to, and dealing with the rest of the events of 2020. Still it was nice to have each other. Stephen started going on daily runs in the Florida sunshine, Darryl invested in a home gym to keep up his fitness routines.

In Fall 2022, Darryl and Stephen started talking about the future. We confirmed we both want to adopt a child, we both want to be married in order to do that. We agreed to each buy rings for the other and to propose to each other within the next few months.

On March 24, 2023, we went to dinner at Glass and Vine (one of our outdoor dining favorites during the pandemic) and each brought our rings. Dinner was lovely and included live music, we went on a walk in Peacock Park (a park which thankfully doesn't have as many peacocks as the name implied) and talked. Darryl got down on one knee first, played music, gave a speech, and proposed. Then Stephen, who was touched and emotional and forgot what he had planned to say, also got got down on a knee and proposed.

We are excited to be getting married at The Rusty Pelican, which is a special location for us-- a typical anniversary dinner spot for us and the place Darryl got taken on his first faculty job interview visit. We are excited to also be beginning an adoption process. We invite you all to come share in that joy as we move forward together and with your support.