Our first time-away together was over Veterans Day weekend in 2023. Everyone knows that when you travel with someone you understand even more about that person. Tom was shocked at the amount of clothes, especially the shoes, that I packed for the trip and handled the suitcases, bags and me with utmost patience as he chuckled mumbling it’s only 4 days.
One of the things Tom loves to do is tour others around places he has been and watch them enjoy all the things that make him happy as well. Tom made sure that my first-time Nashville experience was…as my mom would say, “one for the books!” The trip provided us with a fun escape full of laughter, music, celebrity sightings and non-sightings and a deeper connection. I learned that he supports my goofiness whether it be line-dancing for the first time, dancing on a bar at Coyote Ugly, Karaoke singing at Jason Aldeans, and convincing him to do an Uber karaoke duet in the wee hours of the morning, and he learned that eating White Castle hamburgers at 1:30 am is the reason why they are called belly bombers when you wake up the next day! (My fault for saying You’ve never had a White Castle hamburger?!?!)

Tom always had a vision of retiring in the Caribbean and at the end of 2019 after Frye Island “shut down”, he went to St. Thomas for the off season. During the time Tom was enjoying the other kind of island life, he met a neighbor, Sharie, across from the air bnb he was staying at and they became became friends. Sharie invited Tom to stay in an apartment at her house on his return the following year to care for her dogs and housesit while she ventured back to her Catalina, CA home. And in 2020 and the “snowbird”years following, Tom and Sharie became more than landlord-tenant, they became family. Tom adores Sharie just as much as she adores him!
In fall of 2023, Tom and I lived together for 1 1/2 months before he headed to St. Thomas. During that time, we realized how naturally pleasant it was to spend every day together solidifying what we already knew; “we were meant to be together”! Our initial plan was for me to fly down to St. Thomas on Christmas Day for 10 days but due to my dad’s passing the trip was delayed until after his funeral. While some friends and colleagues told me not to return, unbeknownst to me, Tom already planned for me to stay with him with his proposal of marriage on NYE which was 12/31/23 (123123) in St. John. During the course of our 4-month stay, we purchased property and plan to start building our island dream home at the end of this year.