** Blog Article Taken from Kay’s Personal Blog– Originally Published in February 2017**
On July 30th, 2014 I arrived as a missionary in the Frankfurt, Germany train station. A very enthusiastic Elder welcomed me there and told me all about the exciting things ahead. He explained how he had just served in that very same town for the last year of his mission and how he was now heading home from his mission.
That is how we met– A train station in Germany–on the first day of my mission and the last day of his mission.
As time went on, all I ever heard was “Elder Ockey” this and “Elder Ockey” that. I heard everything about him from how great of a missionary was to how much he ate.
IT DROVE ME CRAZY.
The church community teased me about how perfect we would be for each other and let’s just say locking my heart was NOT a problem. That was the last thing I was thinking about. Still, he emailed me a couple of times. I would respond… but oh so subtly shut him down.
And that was that.
The end of the Ockey adventure, so I thought.
I returned from my mission and went back to school. About 8 months home from my mission, I was back in Texas for the summer going through some of my old mission stuff. I came across one of those emails he had sent me. That email was exactly what I needed to hear. I messaged him thanking him for that.
In return we ended up skyping.
And never stopped.
3-4 hour Skype sessions were not uncommon.
And yet he was still pretty friend zoned.
At the beginning of that fall semester, he offered to pick me up from the airport and took me on our first date. We went to a German restaurant where I barely ate anything and pretty much rejected all of his romantic gestures-airport roses, business dress, road trip snacks. The next weekend he just happened to have an “acapella performance” in Idaho. (I found out later he really wasn’t performing and just wanted to see me). And that is pretty much how the next couple of months went.
We skyped for hours. I went on dates with other people.
He would send me flowers. I went on dates with other people.
He would come visit me. I went on dates with other people.
After a while, I started to make excuses to go to Utah but never really admitted it was to see him. We started writing letters to each other each week and “carrier pigeons” would leave me surprises every now and again.
He was such a sap and I was falling fast.
In October, we reached a turning point conversation. Dan expressed his feelings to me more than he ever had before. (I call it our “I want to date your soul conversation” because he literally said that). He told me he wanted to date me and that he would wait for as long as I needed. He wasn’t going to bring it up again because he didn’t want there to be any pressure or expectation.
I realized I really needed to figure out what I was feeling and that it wasn’t fair to him to keep him hanging.
Whenever I had something exciting, I wanted to tell Dan. Whenever I had a rough day, I wanted to explain it to Dan. I couldn’t NOT talk to him and that was a scary thought for me.
I was addicted….and so I cut out all other dates.
Thus began no-date-november–A month of saying no to all dates so I could figure out what I wanted to do.
One weekend, he was in Idaho and we went on a walk. I wanted to show him this cool place I had found and I honestly didn’t think of it as a romantic place at all. We arrived at this bridge right around sunset and Dan couldn’t resist a random slow dance. There we were standing in a blanket on the bridge and my spaghetti thoughts were going a mile a minute. I thought about all of the things I was feeling. How respectful he had been of where I was at. How much I realllllly liked him. And, although he definitely went 90%, I kissed him. That was a HUGE stepping stone for me because I was the one to make the choice.
I debated back and forth if he should come with me to Arizona to visit all of my extended family for Thanksgiving because I didn’t want it to be a huge commitment.
9 hour road trip for the books.
He told me he loved me that weekend. I have never felt such deep and sincere feelings from someone. From there, things just got better and better. I decided to let myself feel and let my heart out from lock and key.
On the last day of the semester I made a very spontaneous decision to get a ride down to Salt Lake City to meet up with him. After finals, packing, cleaning and moving my entire house in record time, I caught a ride down to Salt Lake. As I stood there stranded in the middle of this big city, I felt it more than ever. I was literally giddy. I just stood on the curb laughing to myself like a crazy person. That night was perfect. Because I let myself fall. I let myself feel.
I loved him.
And then I was dumb and didn’t tell him. We went our separate ways for Christmas and I immediately wished I would have told him. Every 5 hour conversation we had over that break, I felt it. I still don’t know why that was so hard for both of us to be apart because we had only ever known long distance, but I wanted to be with him so bad. So he bought a standby ticket and the day after Christmas there he was, in San Antonio, Texas, driving with my family to go camping on the border of Mexico. I could finally tell him I loved him. Mosquito bitten and all.
As we began the next semester, I decided to take online classes so that I could move to Provo at the end of February. I realized again how deep my feelings were. I was giving up everything I had built since being home from my mission to move somewhere for someone that I wasn’t even sure about. I realized that I had no back up plan. Dan Ockey was my 2017 plan. But I wasn’t scared. Rather I was so excited for the adventures.
On January 28, 2017 was the biggest surprise of my life. I went down to Provo for what I thought was going to be another ordinary week in Danland. We drove up and saw a bridge with a whole bunch of balloons tied to it. As we were walking up to it, I saw pictures of our relationship all along the bridge– candles from when we would go to Walmart and try to make each other guess what scent they were, Martinellis from one of our first dates, roses from the airport adventure story (Ask Dan to tell you that one)– and so many other things that represented our story.
Dan turned to me and said “I know the ring isn’t here but I just wanted to do something nice for you in between.” So after all of this, I STILL didn’t think we were getting engaged that day. Dan started telling me all of these things he loved about me and before I knew it, he was kneeling down and pulling out the most beautiful ring. I had the feels bad. It was the most beautiful moment of my life to this point. Everything just felt so good and right.
Two and a half years ago I would have NEVER thought Dan would be a part of my life. Now, I can’t imagine life without him. I think about this whole process and how we got to this point. How we had both been through so much and learned so much and how we felt like Heavenly Father had led us to each other. I really cannot even express how grateful I am to have someone as wonderful as Dan Ockey to spend eternity with. I cannot wait to marry him on April 21st, 2017.
I love him with my whole soul.