In October of 2021, Lia was vacationing with her family at Brian Head in Southern Utah. She reached out to a friend from highschool to meet up for lunch in Cedar City on October 22nd. As they were sitting in an old diner catching up, her friend, Hyrum, started waving to some friends who had just walked in. Hyrum’s roommate came up to us to introduce himself; “Hi, I’m Dakota.” Later on once Lia got back to the hotel, her mom asked her how lunch was with Hyrum to which she responded, “It was good. I met his cute roommate”.

And that’s where our wild rollercoaster started.

Two months later on December 26th, Dakota messaged Lia on instagram asking her if she wanted to go ice skating the following day since he was in SLC for Christmas. After some banter, she agreed and the date was set. On December 27th the entire valley got a weather alert saying that a “snow squall” was on its way and everyone should stay inside. After considering canceling the date, we foolishly went out into a blizzard as this would be the only chance for us to go out since we lived 3.5 hours from each other. We ended up having an amazing time with nonstop conversation, ice skating, eating grocery store sushi in an empty parking lot, and driving to Copperton where we climbed trees covered in a foot of snow. It all felt like it was straight out of a Hallmark movie.

After that, every weekend, Dakota made up any excuse possible to drive up to SLC. He did this for 2 months and we didn’t go longer than 10 days without seeing each other. Eventually, Lia felt the need to return the favor and began driving down to Cedar City when her schedule would allow. We went back and forth like this for about 5 months until Dakota decided to move to Utah County where we then became absolutely inseparable.

After 9 months of dating on September 15th, 2022, Dakota proposed while we were on the cliffs of Slieve League in Ireland. It was a beautiful and intimate moment that we will forever cherish. We ended the trip with matching tattoos of the ASL sign “I love you”.

During our relationship we have spent many hours doing the things we love, whether that’s rock climbing, paddleboarding, having a game night with friends, visiting all of Utah's national parks in a day, or binging out and watching Modern Family. The memories we've made make us so incredibly happy and they're only the beginning.

It's been a crazy couple of years and we absolutely love the life we've made together.