Whenever we’re at dinner and someone asks how we met, Drea always asks me to tell the story.
Part of it might be that she likes how I tell it, but I also she thinks she knows that I like how I tell it, so she lets me do it. We’ve been together for 7 years and we know each other really well. She’s my favorite person and my best friend and this is how I met her.
Drea was living in New York working for JWT and I was bouncing between couches, trying to find a way to get someone to pay me for comedy. Sometimes those couches were in LA, sometimes it was my sister’s couch in NYC, and for a little while I went back to Oregon and was living with my parents.
Halloween night of 2009, Drea and I both found ourselves in Eugene for an Oregon vs USC game and met through people we were dating at the time (I’ll get there). They thought we would get along well. They were right (again, I’ll get there). A week later, we met up for one drink in NYC. I didn’t want to go, and I don’t think Drea really did either. After one drink, we were having so much fun, we decided to have a second….and then a third….and then dinner….and then some more drinks. Before we knew it, The Smith on 2nd Avenue in the East Village was closing and we had to go across the street to the Pour House so we could keep talking. Eventually it was 3am on a work night (for Drea, I was broke and definitely not employed), and we decided to call it a night.
I walked Drea to the subway, said the hardest goodbye of my life and went home. That was early November of 2009 and I didn’t hear from Drea again for quite awhile.
Unbeknownst to each other, we each broke up with the people we were dating after that night, and for the same reason: “If I can have a night like that with someone, then I shouldn’t be dating someone else.” Being the dummies we are, neither of us made the connection that we should try to date the person we had that night with.
If you can’t tell by now, no one in NYC was paying me to be funny, so I decided to give LA another try. I went from my sister’s couch in NYC to my friend Lindsay Burton’s couch in LA and kept thinking about Drea.
Then Oregon football brought us together again. The Ducks got into the Rose Bowl and Drea was considering coming to LA for it. We started texting. No reason we couldn’t be friends, right? Drea didn’t come to LA, but we kept texting and then instant messaging (remember that?), all while I was writing this movie called We Are Young that started to have a character that sounded a whole lot like Drea.
The texts and IMs continued until Valentine’s Day 2010, when after one of the worst dates of my life (it was supposed to be the day before Valentine’s Day…long story), I was making the long 405 drive from the valley to Redondo Beach and I decided I was going to call the one person I actually wanted to be talking to on Valentines Day…Drea. A month later, a commercial shoot sent Drea to LA and we’ve been together ever since.
We knew it the moment we met. Then we became friends long distance. Then we fell in love and became family.
She’s my favorite person. I’ve never ever been bored when I’m with her. Through the good and the bad, the happy and the sad, Drea who is I want with me forever.
On October 14th, 2017 almost exactly 8 years after I met her on Halloween of 2009, two best friends are getting married in Los Angeles. I’m very glad you’ll be there with us.