An actuary & a marketer walk into a bar…

No, really.

On October 21, 2017, through fateful circumstances, we met at Moe’s Cantina in downtown Chicago.

EMILY: I was a few years into my career and looking at grad school programs. I had my heart set on Public Policy (whoops!) and was seriously considering applying to University of Michigan and moving back home. On the morning of October 21, 2017, I was on their Ann Arbor campus at an information session. I checked my phone after and found texts from my roommates, Steph and Katie, asking if I would be back in time for Katie’s birthday celebration. She got a wristband deal at a bar downtown and they were inviting everyone. I slid into the driver’s seat of my trusty Ford Fusion and started the five-hour trip back to Chicago. I made it with just enough time to change into whatever combination of black top and jeans stood out to me most that day and joined the pre-festivities in our kitchen.

SHIV: That day started out horribly - I had just watched Manchester United lose 2-1 to Huddersfield so your boy was heated! I mean, I can understand if we’d lost to Chelsea or even Everton but HUDDERSFIELD?! Come on! Where even is Huddersfield? I’ve never in my life heard anyone say ‘oh the trip to England was great! London was fine but the real star of the show was Huddersfield.’ Truly disgusting performance. What was I talking about? Oh right. So I spent most of the day moping around and getting some work done before heading over to my friend Angel’s birthday party. I spent a couple of hours there and was about ready to go home when I got a text from another friend, Julie, that I should come out because someone had a great wrist-band deal.

EMILY: We arrived at Moe’s Cantina and met up with a handful of other friends, who proceeded to invite their friends. The more, the merrier! We were dancing and chatting when one of my friends, Maraya, pulled me aside. “There’s a guy here from Kenya!” she told me. “You have to meet him!” I was confused but intrigued. Maraya explained that her friend from work, Julie, had invited one of her friends from college and that he was originally from Kenya. She pointed him out and sent me over to this tall, handsome Indian man in a sport coat. Feeling confident after a recent trip to Nairobi, I started to tell Shiv every word I knew in Kiswahili (which was not many – don’t be impressed) and then switched to French when he told me he spoke it too.

SHIV: I DO remember this funny mzungu coming up and bumbling through a lot of Swahili words, some of which I actually recognized! We had immediate chemistry and I was definitely intrigued.

EMILY: We spent the rest of the night together; he shared his plan of eventually becoming a college professor and his passion for volunteering. I told him all about RefuSHE, where I worked at the time, and the intricacies of my friend group. At the end of the night, my best friend, Hannah, called us an Uber and, while I dozed off in the backseat, she collected Shiv’s number to give to me the next morning.

SHIV: We were inseparable the entire evening! Our conversation ranged from deep life ambitions to past travel destinations to making fun of the guests at the VIP party upstairs but I remember thinking ‘wow, this beautiful, smart and cultured woman hasn’t run away yet - great sign!’

When the night was coming to a close, Emily insisted I join her and Hannah in the Uber and almost as soon as I got in the car, she fell asleep. I quickly realized that my only hope of talking to Emily again was to impress Hannah who, up to that point, seemed pretty unimpressed. We made light conversation but nothing I said seemed to be changing her mind about me (and rightly so - I wasn’t on my A game). We passed by a Mexican restaurant and I sheepishly suggested we get tacos there sometime because ‘I love Mexican cuisine’. Immediately, the whole vibe in the car changed and I’m 99% sure it was because I used the word ‘cuisine’ in a sentence. Hannah was incredibly sweet afterward and told me about her boyfriend and how they were building a future together. When we parted ways, I gave her my number and asked her to pass it on to Sleeping Beauty. I waited and waited to hear back from her for what felt like an eternity…

EMILY: I texted Shiv a couple days later, unsure of how to spell/pronounce his name and if he would want to see me again. To my surprise, he asked me on a date that week! We met at The Vig, where I thought he was standing me up (cough 20 minutes late cough) and then we walked over to a comedy show at The Second City. I was self-conscious of when I would laugh and worried he would find me corny. I didn’t know the full extent of his humor at this point. After the show, we decided we didn’t want to go home yet and hopped over to Benchmark for a round of drinks. It was a Thursday night but the music was blaring, so we sat on the same side of a booth and talked for another couple hours. I found out he was temporarily unemployed – hence the propensity for a late Thursday evening – and we shared some deeper parts of our lives. I remember thinking how easy it was to go from laughing hysterically to baring vulnerability with him. Huh, I thought, this one is not quite like the others. The dates continued, despite my travels and busy work schedule, largely due to Shiv’s intentional perseverance. Eventually, a few months later, he asked me to be his girlfriend and I said the first of many yeses I’ve said to him.

SHIV: What she said!