Shannon and David’s story began the way all great love stories do: on a bus in New Zealand talking about Game of Thrones.

In 2015, they both signed up for a study abroad trip through Virginia Tech, traveling through Australia and New Zealand with a group of fellow nerds. Early on, while driving through Kiwi territory, David overheard Shannon talking about his favorite show. He mentioned he had just finished one of the books, and Shannon couldn't put her finger on why, but in that moment, she knew she wanted to know this guy more.

As the trip went on, they kept finding reasons to spend time together — meandering through bookstores, breaking away from the group to explore cities together, wandering off late at night to have those deeply meaningful conversations that can really only happen when you’re slightly drunk and 10,000 miles from home.

By the end of the trip, they were both hooked.

Back at Virginia Tech, their friendship only grew stronger, and quickly evolved from “friends who spend an alarming amount of time together” into an actual couple by the end of senior year.

After college, life tested that foundation. David went to medical school in Grenada then cities across the East Coast, which meant five years of long distance, two of which had them divided by an ocean. For David, he knew that if they could survive international long distance and terrible Wi-Fi, they could survive anything. For Shannon, there was never one giant cinematic realization — just hundreds of smaller moments where choosing David felt like the easiest thing to do.

Today, not much has changed. They still spend most of their time playing video games, laughing at weird inside jokes, watching fantasy marathons, judging strangers together in public (in a nice way!), slowly collecting more and more animals. and finding genuine joy while coexisting together doing absolutely nothing.

After all these years, they're just two nerds who found each other on a bus in New Zealand. And they haven't stopped choosing each other since.