Baylor and I met in May 2019 (at least I remember us meeting then). Both Baylor and I had younger brothers graduating from Nixa High School and he had run by my family on the way to his own. Baylor and Braden (my brother who has a very important role in us meeting but more on that later) had been working together for about 9 months. As Baylor ran by, Braden flagged him down for a quick picture. I didn’t know Baylor and assumed he was a youth pastor from church (his skinny jeans and Jordans really gave off youth pastor vibes). I thought nothing of it and went on my way.
About mid-June, Braden and I were headed into town and as he drove I mindlessly scrolled Facebook. As I was scrolling through my suggested friends, a profile pic caught my eye. Baylor Boyd. I clicked his profile as it said we had a few mutual friends, one being my brother. I turned the phone to Braden and asked who it was and he told me it was just somebody he worked with. I jokingly (but seriously) said “If he asked me on a date I wouldn’t say no.” I never had a second thought about it and went about my day (and weeks following the conversation).
About midmorning on July 2nd, I received a Facebook message. I checked my phone and was shocked to see it was from Baylor Boyd. I quickly opened it and read:
Come to find out, Braden had made a comment to Baylor (weeks after my initial comment) that I had asked about him. After further investigating, Baylor decided to message me. I quickly responded and said I would love to go on a date, we exchanged numbers and made plans for the next day. Baylor came to pick me up the following day and as soon as he walked in the front door the first thing I thought was “I don’t remember him being that tall” (he is 6ft 3in and I am 5ft 4in so a decent height difference between us). Our first date was AMAZING but did not go as planned at all. We had planned to go to sushi in Ozark and a movie in Springfield. We pulled up to the sushi restaurant and it was closed so we decided to try a new sushi place in town (we now go here for our anniversary every year). We enjoyed dinner and had some time to kill before the movie so we headed to a little coffee shop. What was supposed to be a 30 minute visit to the coffee shop turned into a couple of hours of just sitting and talking and missing our original show time. We eventually made it to the movie showing and wrapped our night up. Baylor dropped me back off at home. He claims I jumped out of the car before he could grab my door and made my way quickly inside without a proper goodbye (I don’t remember it this way). Baylor tells everyone when he left my house he prayed to God saying He better close the door to me if that wasn’t His plan because Baylor was moving full steam ahead in his pursuit of me. I was a bit more timid in relationships so it took me a little more time (probably a month) and by that point, we both knew this was what we wanted for the rest of our lives.
In December (yes 5 months into dating) we started having serious conversations about marriage and we even went and I picked out a ring. We didn’t have a set timeline but knew we wanted to get engaged in 2020. The next few months passed and as we had more conversations about marriage Baylor started pushing the date off and saying that it would likely be 2021 before we could get engaged. I was SO frustrated because we had talked so much about 2020 being the year we took the next step. Little did I know he had my ring for a couple of months and was just really trying to pull off the surprise.
In March of 2020 (1 week before the country shut down due to COVID) Baylor worked with my mom to surprise me with a “picnic date”. On our way to the park, my heart was racing. I thought that this was the moment it was actually happening. When we arrived at the park, I realized there was actually a picnic set up so those butterflies quickly subsided and I just looked forward to a cute date. Little did I know, as I was admiring the flowers and setup Baylor had, he was behind me asking the people in the gazebo if they wouldn’t mind leaving because he was about to propose to his girlfriend. He came back and grabbed my hand and walked me over there. As I was in my own little world looking around the gazebo, I turned around and he was on one knee with a ring box open (UPSIDE DOWN which is just a funny story now). I flipped the box over, asked if he talked to my parents, and then finally said yes!
We headed home to see my parents (or so I thought) and pulled up to a giant party to celebrate us. It was such a sweet time with all of our friends and family there. We had already picked a date, August 21, 2020, which yes was only 5 months away. We were thankful that we were able to celebrate when we did because a few days later our lives and plans were flipped upside down. We continued to plan our wedding through COVID, just praying it would die down enough for us to still have our wedding in 5 short months. There were some hiccups along the way but we finally made it to our special day and IT WAS PERFECT. I wouldn’t have changed a thing and would live it all over again.
After our wedding, we quickly settled into newlywed life and loved every minute of being together. In the years following we definitely had our ups and downs from job changes to moving to trying to get pregnant (more on that later). Looking back, I am so thankful God opened the doors for us to come together and begin to build our life together.