One of my favorite parts of “Our Story” is how much we have in common. Jacob grew up in the Ozark Mountains of Elkins, Arkansas on his family’s commercial black Angus cow-calf farm. Similarly, I grew up on my family’s cow-calf farm, except with white cows and much flatter ground. We are both the baby of the family and have lots of sisters to help us along the way. Jacob graduated from the University of Arkansas one year before I enrolled in the same agricultural department. Although we barely missed one another in our college experiences, we still had enough mutual friends and God’s great timing to perfectly bring us together.

It all started during my Sophomore year when two friends and I joined our professor, Dr. Rucker, who is more lovingly known as “Mother Rucker,” for lunch. As we talked about our classes and future careers, the conversation naturally shifted. When it was my turn to answer Dr. Rucker’s question, “What are you looking for in a husband?” I had a short answer— “He loves Jesus, and he loves agriculture.” To that she had a short reply, “You need to meet the Marley twins.” As you guessed, we did meet! But it wasn't for several months since Jacob was spending the winter calving at Blair Brothers Angus Ranch in South Dakota. In hindsight, there were several foreshadowing occasions like this, including when my friends from StuMo, Anna and Aubrey Kate, made separate references to the twins in conversations surrounding Kaleo and living on a farm. In February, it went as far as my mom showing me a picture of the twins on Brooke’s Instagram and saying, “Look Schyler, you can find a boy like this.”

In April, just three months after Brooke and Jeffrey began dating, Brooke started to suggest a group date to introduce me and Jacob. Jacob claims all he knew about me before our first date was that I was in Collegiate Farm Bureau and going to Kaleo, and that was enough for him to agree to Brooke’s match-making schemes. I, on the other hand, was much more skeptical and did enough social media stalking and research beforehand to learn nearly nothing new about him on our first date! Our first date was at TopGolf with Jeffrey and Brooke and our friends Logan and Riley. About halfway through our game of golf, I kid you not, I paused, and thought to myself, “I think I am going to marry him.” The next week, Jacob planned a low-stakes second date to Sonic, where we ate ice cream and talked non-stop for four hours. My friends did a drive-by well-being check because the date was lasting so long!

After our casual second date, we upped the ante with my sorority formal for our third outing. I introduced Jacob to many of my best friends and 300 sorority sisters who awkwardly mistook him for my boyfriend.

A few days later, I attended Kara and Corey’s wedding with Jacob which was the first event at Plentywoods Venue. I was initially nervous to meet the sisters and parents, extended family and a TON of family friends. After an evening of swing dancing and watching him interact with his family, I knew I had it bad for this Arkansas Cowboy!

After about twenty days of getting to know each other, Jacob asked me to be his girlfriend just before I left to spend the summer in Florida at Kaleo. Over our nine weeks of long distance dating, we shared lots of FaceTime calls and Jacob made a quick visit to the Sunshine State.

In August, Jacob made his first trip to Missouri to meet my family and did not escape the infamous “boyfriend talk” with my dad, sledgehammer included. Jacob and I spent 15 months dating. We love going to Razorback sporting events together, checking cows and calves and trying new local restaurants.

On a Tuesday in August, my engagement ring arrived, and just two short days later Jacob drove from Arkansas to the Missouri State Fair with the ring box burning a hole in his pocket. The proposal plan was a fun joint effort between our moms, sisters, and my friends and was successfully the biggest and best surprise of my life. Selestia had me convinced that we were headed to see Ian Munsick in concert, and we stopped by our favorite jewelry booth enroute. To my surprise, I turned around to find Jacob down on one knee ready to propose. It was an easy “Yes!” from me! Many of our friends and family were in on the surprise and watched the proposal, ate dinner to celebrate and made it to the concert to top off a great night. The Missouri State Fair is one of my favorite places in the world, and it was a joy to celebrate our engagement in my home state with some of our loved ones. Neither Marsha nor I had ever seen Jacob smile as big as he did on our engagement day.

We are so grateful for every one of you who has had a role in the “timeline” of our lives. The Lord is faithful. Thank you so much for helping us celebrate our marriage- we love y'all!