Troy and I were engaged on October 9, 1995. It’s kind of a funny story.

We met in August 1994, during Resident Assistant training. We had both ended long-term relationships right before we met, and neither of us were in a hurry to start dating someone new. Not that we considered each other potential dating material, because we didn’t. We were just co-workers and friends at first. As fall turned to winter we got to know each other better and became good friends. We spent so much time together that our co-workers and friends started asking us, “Are you guys dating?”

The first few times we were asked that question, we laughed about how people saw a guy and girl together and automatically assumed they must be romantically involved. After the sixth or seventh person asked us we said, Hmm, why does everyone keep asking us that? We decided that maybe we’d be missing out on something really great if we didn’t at least give it a try. So we shifted our paradigm and started dating. Three weeks later we knew we would eventually get married. It wasn’t any grand gesture or realization, it was just a quiet knowledge that we were supposed to be together, a sense of rightness.

Troy graduated in May 1995 and was commissioned as a Navy officer. He stayed in Lincoln that summer, working at the ROTC unit and spending as much time with me as we could manage. At the end of July he drove off to Athens, Georgia, where he would be a student at the Navy Supply School for six months. Saying good-bye to him was one of the hardest things I’d ever done, and that initial period of living in different states remains the most difficult separation we’ve endured in our 14 years of knowing each other.

When I went to visit Troy over Columbus Day weekend in October, we weren’t planning to get engaged. We thought maybe we’d get engaged at Christmas, and while I was there we went looking at rings so Troy could get an idea of what I liked. At one small jewelry store the owner was very friendly and spent a long time talking to us, asking us questions about where we were from, how long we’d known each other, etc. In the course of conversation we mentioned that I was there visiting for the weekend and would be going home the next day.

There was a ring at that store that I liked very much. Troy decided to go ahead and buy it so he’d have it when he decided the time was right to propose. That was perfectly all right with me; I knew we’d get engaged eventually and wasn’t in a big hurry. But the jeweler was astonished that I didn’t want to take the ring back to Nebraska with me. He told us he could have the ring resized and ready to pick up by the next day, if we changed our minds. We assured him that wasn’t necessary, thanked him for all his help, and said good-bye.

Back at Troy’s apartment we got to talking about it and decided that maybe…yeah, maybe we did want to get engaged now! Troy called up the jewelry store and asked them to have the ring ready the next day. Then we called our parents to tell them we were officially engaged. They were all happy and unsurprised, which we thought was funny. They’d all seen it coming, even though we hadn’t. That was going to be a common theme in the days and weeks to come when we shared the news with friends and family.

The next day we stopped by the store to pick up the ring on our way to the airport in Atlanta. When we got back to the car, I said to Troy, “You do realize that a jeweler talked us into getting engaged, don’t you?” We both cracked up, Troy put the ring on my finger, and we drove happily to the airport. It wasn’t till later that we realized we were so busy laughing that Troy never officially proposed, but it was okay. Laughing together was, and still is, sort of a defining element of our relationship. We figured it was fitting that our engagement started not with a proposal but with laughter.