Kate's Story

Our story began like many others--a match on Hinge, casual conversation, a round of Jewish geography, and a plan for a first date. Despite each of us nearly canceling, we found ourselves heading to The Tippler on August 11th, 2022. I stood on the subway platform, the L train doors opened, and standing in my way was a tall man wearing headphones, seemingly oblivious to the open doors behind him. I turned to give him a dirty look, but immediately was caught off guard by how familiar he looked. I didn’t think much about it and zoned back into my own music. He, however, kept glancing at me. Maybe he was judging my (admittedly late-in-the-game) COVID-era mask? He walked up to me. I took my headphones out as he said “Are you..?” And then it clicked--he was Jake from Hinge. I ripped my mask off as quickly as I could, and thus began what I would later text Jake as the “BEST FIRST DATE EVER.”

One of Jake’s Hinge prompts was “tell me the first concert you’ve ever been to and the most recent concert you went to”, so I asked him about his. He shared that his first concert was Aaron Carter at Jones Beach—coincidentally, my first concert as well. I told him my most recent concert was Phish, which happened to also be his. I said how cool it was that he’s also into jam bands, and mentioned that I was listening to the band Goose when we met on the subway. He pulled up his Spotify to show me that he was also listening to Goose at that exact moment. The ice was broken, conversation flowed, and I quickly realized how much I liked the smart, attentive, down-to-earth guy sitting across from me. It really was the best first (and last first) date ever.

The next morning, as I prepped for my friend Sam’s bachelorette party, I called my mom to GUSH about the amazing date I went on the night before. I truly could not shut up about Jake. At the party, my friends and I joked that it was my bachelorette party because I had just met my future husband. We were only joking, but of course there was something in me that felt like there was truth in it.

It wasn’t long before we were officially boyfriend and girlfriend and went on our first getaway together—a trip upstate to the town of Accord for the Woodsist Music Festival at Arrowood Farms. Jake found a new restaurant/resort called Inness where we got dinner, sat by a bon fire overlooking the Catskill Mountains, and listened as Waxahatchee played night one of the Woodsist Festival in the distance. It was there where we both fell in love, where Jake had the thought that he’d propose to me in that very spot one day, and where two years later, he followed through on that plan, asking me to marry him.

Jake's Story

The story began at the beginning of August in 2022 on the dating app meant to be deleted, Hinge. I came across Kate, a music loving jew from Long Island who graduated from University of Maryland. I knew we spoke the same language.

Our first date started out as I was unknowingly blocking the subway doors as a masked Kate tried to enter. I glanced over and thought it might have been Kate, but I thought “do I approach a masked woman on the subway and ask if she’s my date for tonight?”. Kate then noticed me awkwardly staring and dropped her mask to say hello.

We began bonding over music and realized that we never answered the question on my dating profile, “Who was your first and last concert?”. I shared that my last was Phish and first was Aaron Carter (Jones Beach 2001), Kate had a gigantic smile, blushed a bit and said, “Same!”. We were both stunned at the coincidence, the ice was officially broken and the room was starting to heat up. Kate then went on to tell me about her new favorite band, Goose. I take out my phone and show her a paused Goose song that I was listening to on the way there and she showed me a paused Goose song as well. We were freaked out at this point.

I think our blind confidence from that night left us thinking that we would always find our story at THIS DAY, so I couldn’t be happier to celebrate as we formally turn that blind confidence into an eternal bond…. Thank you, Kate, for helping us write such a beautiful first few chapters, and I can’t wait to continue writing an endless story.