Our Love Story

Lee here, Katie will be chiming in with her comments in (parentheses). Thank you so much for taking the time to read about us! We’re big fans of each other and we hope you enjoy our love story. (Fair warning… we go waaaay back so this story has some girth to it.)

Katie and I were born less than a month apart, and while she started life off in Chicago & I in Kent, we soon came to find ourselves forever in each other’s lives. (Slowly at first!) 

In the summer of 1995 Katie moved with her family to Chagrin Falls, OH and started 1st grade at Gardiner Elementary. Katie was a cute blonde package of bubbly energy; obviously not much has changed for her. Katie loved Horses, her dog, her little brother Bryan, her best friend was a make-believe alien, and her favorite activity was collecting salamanders in the woods.

I (Lee) moved to Auburn Twp, in the summer of 1996 and started 2nd grade at Gardiner Elementary. I was a cute (taller) blonde bundle of energy who loved his dog, swimming, and looked up to his 4 older brothers.

First day of 2nd grade, I saw Katie and literally thought she was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. Being a shy elementary school boy, and feeling like the new kid, not much materialized out of this other than utter shock whenever Katie would speak to or look at me. ( I was quite the opposite child, getting sheer enjoyment chasing and getting chased by boys around recess and in the halls – who doesn’t love coodies?!). In elementary school I joined choir, because Katie was in choir. I also joined band – I legitimately really wanted to play saxophone, my father David is a world class Jazz Pianist – but was truly motivated because Katie joined band, and played flute. Eventually, in 5th grade, I got up the courage to talk to Katie Sickling and let it be known that I did in fact really, really like her. (Not sure if this is the message that was portrayed…)

It was the last day of elementary school, we were about to embark on a new chapter as middle schoolers and there was an end of the school year party with a prize raffle. There I decided that whatever I won I would find Katie, and give it to her letting my feelings be known. 

I won a 101 Dalmatians Picture frame with a heart in it. Better prize options existed I knew, but this is what I had to work with. As awkwardly as possible I walked up to Katie and said “hi, I got you this” and proceeded to sprint away from her as fast as possible. ( he is not joking folks.. literally no interaction aside from shoving the gift at me and running! I didn’t exactly know how to interpret it or react, nor could I, given it was the last day of school..)

Then came middle school. Katie played volleyball, soccer, basketball and track. I played football, basketball and track. I got nervous and excited when Katie would walk by me in the hall, and I used to take the long route to my bus so I could walk by her’s and maybe get a glimpse of her through the window. ( it was really cool back in the day to chat with a girl or guy from your bus window… think tossing rocks at a bedroom window just middle school style ) It was a hard core grade school crush – she was and still is so beautiful, inside and out.

Next was high school. In 2003 I got the nerve to finally start talking to Katie like a normal human – my childhood best friend Mike Sawayda had some classes with Katie, and I totally used that connection ( for the record…no connection needed! I was not some scary standoffish girl! I was friendly with everyone although it was quite a shock when Lee confidently strolled over and asked if I wanted to hangout with him and his friends- given our last conversation, if you can call it that, was the 101 Dalmatians incident!) I asked her to come play poker at my friend Ben’s house. She had fun, so then, I asked her to homecoming. Unfortunately for me though, not long after that she started dating one of my best friends, Kris. (Kris and I dated the remaining high school years until we both went off to college in different states).

Being a good friend, I tried really hard to put Katie in my own kind of “friend zone”, even though I knew it was me that was put in the zone. However, our relationship really grew strong during high school. Hanging out with all our friends in my basement, bonfires with scary stories from Chad, swimming at Twin Lakes, all sorts of fun rural Ohio high school shenanigans. ( running man! Now banned in all of Geauga County thanks to our crew) Although we were best friends, Katie still held a very special place in my heart.

College came and off I went to The Cradle of Coaches, Ohio’s Public Ivy, the University that was chartered when Florida belonged to Spain: Miami University. Katie went to the University of Miami – a small private school in southern Florida. ( Whoa Whoa Whoa! I went to a school where most people chose to vacation – when you hear Miami you don’t automatically think of JCrew & corn fields – you think of palm trees and football: Go ‘Canes!) She enrolled as a Varsity Track athlete and marine biology major. My Miami is the original Miami. Love and Honor.

I made sure to see Katie whenever I could, and I loved every time Katie would call me to talk or “poke me” on Facebook. Katie was excited to hear about my first girlfriend, (and all the “maybe’s” before her) and I hated hearing about all the weird dudes in Florida that liked her. (We would spend hours chatting with each other about the most recent school party or football game and it was always nice having someone who had known me so well to talk with while I was so far from home) 

After college came Chicago for Katie – via some time in Colorado – and Kentucky for me. Katie came to visit, conveniently right after we were both recently single. We went to my school Halloween party, a basement bar concert, and Keeneland. I wanted to kiss her so bad but I couldn’t. Here was this woman I have loved my entire life, who looks at me, listens to me, and truly cares about me like nobody else ever has and yet I just knew the timing wasn’t right. I couldn’t do it. (meanwhile my mom was so excited to hear I was going to visit Lee. She even came to watch my newly acquired puppy at the time, Bella, just so I wouldn’t have any excuse not to go. We even giggled like girls before I left wondering if maybe, surely, Lee would finally kiss me) She went back to Chicago, and I made every dental convention excuse I could muster to get time off of school to go visit her, where we made even more memories. (While Lee was studying at Kentucky we would write pen pal letters to each other and he would draw me pictures of teeth and even seal the letters with the wax he used for tooth modeling. It was romantic while at the same time just us being friends. An extension of our long college chats where we would share about the most recent significant – or not so significant- person in our lives and all the things we were experiencing in our respective cities.)

In 2016 Katie and Becca came to visit me in my new home during my dental residency, Seattle. She couldn’t understand what I liked about Seattle except it sounded kinda cool that I described the Forest and mountains as “Fern Gully”. On that trip we hiked, we ate, and we laughed. Little did I know that this trip would turn into a Seattle interview as Katie had the opportunity to apply for an internal promotion at work that would take her to Seattle doing sales. She was offered the job, and she said yes. 

Flash forward through life a couple years, and nobody else ever came close to Katie. It had become painfully evident that she was my person, that I would love her forever. It felt like fate that someone I knew so well and cared for so deeply was living less than a mile from me almost 3,000 miles away from “home”.

In April of 2018 after barely 6 months of dating, Katie and I boarded a tiny float plane in South Lake Union and flew to Orca’s Island, a small island in the Puget Sound some 50 miles north of Seattle. Katie had never been to the San Juan Islands, and this weekend was a surprise. We landed in Deer Harbor, and went to our cottage for the weekend. The evening of April 20, 2018 I asked Katie to marry me. She said yes, and I am confidently the luckiest man in the world.