Our story goes all the way back to May 2022, long before either of us knew where life would eventually take us. At the time, Ikaika was living in Hawaiʻi and traveled to Seattle, Washington, for a vacation, while Ethan had already made Washington home after moving to Seattle in October 2021. We were living thousands of miles apart and going about our separate lives with absolutely no idea that our paths were about to cross. Looking back now, it’s pretty crazy to think that one vacation would end up being the very beginning of our story. What seemed like an ordinary trip to Seattle would eventually connect two completely separate lives.
During Ikaika’s vacation, he decided to take a day trip north from Seattle to Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Somewhere along the way, Tinder brought the two of us together, and we matched. At the time, it could have easily been nothing more than a random vacation match, especially since Ikaika would eventually be returning home to Hawaiʻi while Ethan was staying in Washington. Neither of us could have known that one swipe during a day trip to Canada would eventually lead us all the way here. There certainly wasn’t any thought at the time that we had just met the person we would one day marry.
After matching, we started talking and eventually exchanged Snapchats. Once Ikaika’s vacation was over, he returned home to Hawaiʻi while Ethan remained in Seattle, putting an ocean and thousands of miles between us. There wasn’t any expectation that we were suddenly going to start a long-distance relationship or that our Tinder match had to become something serious. We simply stayed connected and continued getting to know each other whenever we had the chance. For both of us, it was easy and casual, and we simply let the connection develop at its own pace.
For a little over a year, most of our connection existed through Snapchat. We talked on and off, sometimes having periods where we talked quite a bit and other times when life got busy and our conversations slowed down. Somehow, we always seemed to find our way back into conversation, even though we still had never actually met each other in person. What started as a random match never completely disappeared, even with all the distance and time between us. Neither of us really knew where it was going, but for some reason, we kept each other in our lives.
Toward the end of 2023, our connection started to change. Around November or December, Ikaika finally asked Ethan for his phone number, taking our conversations beyond Snapchat and making things feel a little more personal. We started talking more regularly and learning more about each other after already having known one another online for more than a year. Neither of us was rushing anything, but it was becoming clear that there was a reason we had continued talking for so long. What had begun as occasional Snapchat conversations was slowly turning into a genuine connection between the two of us.
Then life unexpectedly brought us much closer together. Ikaika found out that he would be moving from Hawaiʻi to Seattle in January 2024, meaning that after all that time talking from thousands of miles away, we were finally going to be living in the same city. The possibility of actually meeting each other no longer required another vacation or a flight across the Pacific. After almost two years of knowing each other online, we finally had the opportunity to see where this connection could go in real life. For the first time since matching, there was a real possibility that we could become part of each other’s everyday lives.
In February 2024, we finally met face-to-face for the first time, nearly two years after originally matching on Tinder. After so much time communicating through Snapchat, text messages, and our phones, we finally got to spend time together in person. Thankfully, the connection we had built from a distance was still there when we were standing in front of each other. That first meeting became the beginning of an entirely different chapter in our story. After nearly two years of only knowing each other through a screen, we finally had the chance to learn who we were together in person.
After finally meeting, we started spending quite a bit of time together. Hanging out became regular dates, and regular dates became more opportunities to experience everyday life together and truly get to know one another. Instead of being separated by an ocean, we could finally explore Seattle together, make memories, laugh together, and actually be present in each other’s lives. After knowing each other through a screen for so long, being able to simply spend time together felt like a completely different experience. With every date and every day spent together, our relationship became less about how we originally met and more about the life we were beginning to create together.
Over the next several months, our relationship continued to grow naturally. There was no longer a flight across the Pacific, a time difference, or a phone screen separating us, and we were finally able to see what our connection looked like in everyday life. Somehow, the person Ikaika had randomly matched with while taking a day trip to Canada had become someone he was seeing regularly, while the person Ethan had matched with from Hawaiʻi was suddenly living right there in Seattle. Little by little, what had started so casually was becoming an important part of both of our lives. Without forcing a timeline or putting a label on things too quickly, we allowed our relationship to become what it was meant to be.
Then came Monday, August 05th, 2024. After several months of dating and spending more and more time together, Ethan asked Ikaika to officially be his boyfriend. By then, more than two years had passed since our first Tinder match, more than a year had been spent talking on and off through Snapchat, and about six months had passed since we finally met in person. Monday, August 05th officially became the beginning of our relationship and a date that will always be an important part of our story. After such a long and unexpected journey to that moment, we were finally able to call each other boyfriends and begin our relationship together officially.
As our relationship grew, traveling together became one of the things we loved doing most. We frequently took trips together, experienced new places side by side, and created memories far beyond Seattle. Traveling gave us the opportunity to see different sides of each other, whether we were excitedly planning where to go next, navigating airports and long travel days, or simply enjoying being somewhere new together. Some of our favorite memories came from being away from home and experiencing something for the first time with each other. Every trip became another chapter in a relationship that had, fittingly enough, started while Ikaika was traveling in the first place.
But our story has never been made up of only vacations, dates, and happy memories. Throughout our relationship, we have gone through the highs and the lows, the good, the bad, and even the ugly. We have celebrated some incredible moments together, but we have also faced difficult seasons that challenged us individually and as a couple. Those experiences taught us how to communicate, support one another, forgive, grow, and continue choosing each other even when life wasn’t easy. Through every version of life we experienced together, we learned that a strong relationship isn’t about everything always being perfect—it’s about how we continue showing up for one another.
Our little family also grew along the way with Ikaika’s dog, Kainalu. As Ethan became a bigger part of Ikaika’s life, he naturally became Kainalu’s unofficial “stepdad” too, taking on all the love, responsibility, and everyday moments that came with having him in our lives. Kainalu became part of our routines, our adventures, and the home we were beginning to build together. Before we knew it, it wasn’t simply Ikaika and Ethan anymore—it was the three of us becoming our own little family. Kainalu may have technically been Ikaika’s dog first, but he quickly became an important part of both of our lives and our story together.
Through 2025, we became an even bigger part of each other’s everyday lives. We celebrated milestones, traveled together, supported one another through changes and challenges, and continued learning what it meant to build a future as a couple. We saw each other at our happiest, our most stressed, our most excited, and during moments when life felt overwhelming. What had started as dating eventually became a true partnership, and conversations about our future together became more serious and real. By then, it wasn’t simply about spending time together anymore—it was about knowing that we wanted to continue building our lives side by side.
In January 2026, we took one of our biggest steps yet and officially moved in together. For the first time, we weren’t just meeting for dates, planning trips, or spending time at each other’s places—we were creating a home that we could truly call ours, with Kainalu right there alongside us. Living together brought a completely new side to our relationship as we learned each other’s routines, shared responsibilities, and experienced all the ordinary moments that come with building a life under the same roof. It gave us the opportunity to grow even closer and experience what being true partners looked like every single day. After once living thousands of miles apart, it was pretty incredible to realize that we were now waking up and coming home to each other as our own little family.
Living together also reminded us that building a life together isn’t always glamorous. It meant sharing the exciting moments along with the everyday responsibilities, disagreements, stressful days, difficult conversations, and all the little things that come with combining two lives into one. Through it all, we continued learning about each other and growing both individually and together. We had already experienced enough of life together to know that love isn’t measured only by the best days, but also by how you stand beside each other during the hardest ones. The good, the bad, and the ugly all became part of our story—and ultimately made our relationship stronger.
Looking back, there were so many little things that had to happen at exactly the right time for the two of us to ever meet. Ikaika had to travel from Hawaiʻi to Seattle, decide to take a day trip across the border to Vancouver, Canada, and open Tinder, while Ethan had to have already made the decision to move to Seattle months earlier. Then, even after matching, we had to stay connected for more than a year before life eventually brought us to the same city. A different vacation, a different day, or even a different swipe could have meant that our paths never crossed. Somehow, through all the distance, timing, changes, adventures, and challenges happening in both of our lives, we ended up exactly where we needed to be.
Seattle was originally just somewhere Ikaika came to visit on vacation, while for Ethan, it had already become home. Less than two years after that first trip, Seattle became the place we finally met, started dating, fell in love, traveled from together, weathered difficult seasons together, became a little family with Kainalu, and eventually created a home together. What started with a Tinder match in May 2022 became a relationship built through far more than just the best moments—we have experienced the highs and lows, the good, the bad, and the ugly, and continued choosing each other through all of it. Now, that unexpected match is part of the story leading us to our wedding day on Saturday, February 05th, 2028, when we’ll begin the next chapter of our lives together. From Hawaiʻi to Washington, with an unexpected day trip to Canada in between, neither of us could have imagined just how far one Tinder match would take us.