Gail & Matt met in early 2020 when Gail began working at Girl Scouts River Valleys as a Logistics Manager for the cookie sale. Matt had been working there as a Property Manager for 4 years at the time. They interacted professionally yet infrequently before Gail was unfortunately laid off due to the COVID 19 pandemic.  

Fast forward to January 2021; Gail was working as an in-home teacher/nanny to 4 children in Eagan and Matt found himself in charge of more cookie sale-related activities due to a recent re-org at GSRV. He reached out to Gail to talk cookies and they soon decided to take a hike together. Over ice cream sandwiches, hiking, and pandemic-conscious small gatherings, the two began their romance. 

They immediately started traveling together, creating memories from all over the country. Weddings took them to Washington DC, Glacier National Park, and around Minnesota. Matt fell in love with Gail's trip planning organization and rolled his eyes at her love of scratch offs, and Gail fell in love with Matt's love of exploration and trail cooking skills while rolling her eyes at his ever-growing knife collection. 

2022 only brought them more adventures full of more road trips (5 national parks!), house projects (a brand new deck on Gail's house), and many nights cooking dinner and watching Taskmaster on TV. Through everything from job related stresses and a tonsillectomy, they deepened their love and had a damn fun time together. 

In the beginning of 2023, Gail accompanied Matt on a short trip to Prairie Du Chein, buying scratch-offs at every gas station. Matt picked some out for her before she took a shift driving and she left them in his truck to scratch at a later date. They had a nice visit in Prairie preparing Matt's mom's house to be sold. 

At every opportunity he had, Matt asked Gail what she did with her scratch offs. Gail had no idea - "probably left them in your truck" was often her response. This conversation repeated itself for weeks. 

Six weeks passed and on a snowy Monday afternoon in February, Matt asked Gail to marry him minutes before she had a meeting and then an evening art class. She of course said yes, and the two had a wonderful bright memory in a dreary cold winter. 

Nearly a month after that, Matt finally found the scratch offs that Gail had left in his truck. On an early morning trip to Menards, she found loser card after loser card, until the last card - "Oh I finally won! I wonder how much I won! Why are there so many damn words?" she exclaimed her thoughts aloud as she scratched off her favorite winning ticket of all - a proposal card. It finally made sense why Matt was (finally) so interested in her scratch offs.