They knew of each other in college since they were both in the marching band (her on piccolo and Drew on horn/mellophone), but never really interacted. It was after college that they connected on Tinder. “We have a mutual friend so I texted her and said something along the lines of, ‘what do you know about him?'” Alyson said. “[Our friend] said he’s great and she wasn’t wrong!” They met in person at trivia night at Mickey’s with some friends and then shortly thereafter, had their first dinner date.

They been together since 2019 and have navigated many miles, literally and figuratively. “We had only been dating for around 6 months when he got a job in Kansas City and moved. We were long distance for about four and a half years before I was able to move there as well. During that time of long distance, I lost both my dad and my grandpa. Throughout all of it, Drew was there for me for everything. Even though he lived over four hours away, I always felt like he was there for me.”

They came back to Iowa City this past weekend and we did their engagement session at the same place Drew proposed a few months ago. “The week before we were planning on being back in town in April, Drew had asked if I wanted to get brunch with our mutual friend, Amanda. This wasn’t an unusual question because we had done similar things before. When the day came, Drew and I headed to Iowa City. When we got into town, Drew said, ‘Oh, Amanda texted and said she’s going to be late. Do you want to walk around while we’re waiting for her?’ This also wasn’t unusual because she’s late a lot, haha, especially to morning events! So we ended up walking around Iowa City and ended up on the Pentacrest. We were walking around the Old Capitol when he stopped me and popped the question! Our friend was there waiting to take pictures, not late after all.”