About Us

Ohio natives born and raised, Jonathan and Crystal both grew up in Northwest Ohio a mere 30 miles away from each other -- Jonathan in Toledo, Crystal in Bowling Green. Their families shopped for groceries at Tee Oriental, went to the Franklin Park Mall on weekends and ate at the only decent Chinese restaurant in NW Ohio, "New Empire". Given that there wasn't a huge array of places to frequent in the area, you would have thought that their paths should have crossed at some point in time. Here are a few examples of how close they came to meeting one another before that fateful day in 1999. In the fourth grade, Crystal's parents took her to Jonathan's school to see if she would like to attend. Horrified by the thought of leaving her friends, Crystal threw a tantrum and refused to go. For as long as he can remember, Jonathan had been going to Shadow Valley to train for tennis, little did he know that on the "not so good" side of the court Crystal was working on her ground strokes as well. Unfortunately, she was never good enough to make it over to the advanced side, so they apparently were not destined to meet on a tennis court. Jonathan played in the same piano competitions as Crystal's sister, Tiffany -- but they were in different age divisions, so once again the families never met.

Until it became time to choose colleges. Crystal had narrowed her choices down to William and Mary, if she decided to pursue a liberal arts major, and Carnegie Mellon, if she decided to become a computer scientist. Jonathan, on the other hand, was deciding between Cornell, whose cafeteria was known to serve lobster once per year because of their fabulous hospitality major, and Carnegie Mellon for Electrical and Computer Engineering. In the end, they both decided to become part of the class of 2003 at CMU.

It was then that Eugenia decided to introduce the two. Crystal and Eugenia had been great friends since birth, and Jonathan attended school with Eugenia. She thought it would be nice for them to meet since they were both going to CMU and knew no one else there. Jonathan was reluctant to meet this stranger as he was mistakenly under the impression that Crystal was older and already a junior at CMU. He was quite relieved to learn that Crystal was also going to be a freshman and was in the same situation as he. Crystal thought that he seemed nice but shy as he had spoken little and had spent his time swinging his legs nervously while he sat on the swing in Eugenia's backyard.

Once they arrived at CMU for freshman orientation, it was quite nice to already have an acquaintance in this strange new environment. As they became friends they found that they had a lot in common. After a few months Jonathan worked up the nerve to ask Crystal out and she accepted. :) Unfortunately, immediately after Jonathan asked Crystal out, all power went out in his dorm. Concerned that Crystal would find it strange that he had disappeared from all modes of communication, Jonathan rode his bike over to Crystal's dorm to make sure that all was well.

Two bachelor's degrees, two master's degrees, a Ph.D, several jobs and zip-codes later, Jonathan took Crystal out to dinner to celebrate their ninth anniversary of being together. He took her to one of their favorite restaurants in S.F. and surprised her by asking her to marry him. Quite certain that they were perfect for each other, Crystal said yes, and the rest is history!