About Alex:

Alex is the younger of two boys. His father works for Boeing and his mother is an educational technologies consultant. He graduated from West Point in May of this year, where he studied Defense and Strategic Studies, Arabic, and Mechanical Engineering. He trained his company Sandhurst team two years in a row. He commissioned as an Ordnance officer and will begin work at Fort Hood in 2015. Alex likes steak, carbs, correct usage of the term “strategy,” and, thankfully for Kelley, building bookshelves. He dislikes vegetables and writing thank-you notes. His hobbies also include proposing marriage to older women.

 

About Kelley:

 

Kelley is a relatively nice girl with a dowry full of goats and fluffy chickens. She has most of her teeth and takes a bath every week whether she needs it or not. She enjoys writing snarky profiles about herself on the Internet.

 

But seriously.

 

Kelley is a native Texan and the second of four girls, who are also all West Pointers (Classes of 2009, 2015, and 2018). Her mom is a nurse, her dad is a doctor, and her stepmother teaches pre-school at her high school alma mater. She graduated from West Point in 2012, where she studied Literature, Chinese, and Environmental Engineering. She was an active member of the Glee Club and the Cadet Opera Forum. She is an Ordnance officer currently stationed at Fort Hood in Texas, where she manages logistical operations for a Military Intelligence Battalion. She has a bunny named Betty White. She likes naptime, cookies, and her burgeoning book collection. She dislikes nature and mandatory participation in CrossFit. Her hobbies also include cradle-robbing.

 

How it all began:

Kelley was injured and bound to crutches at the beginning of her firstie year. Alex was pulling duty within the barracks, sitting at a desk to “guard” the area. As a firstie, Kelley was allowed to have a refrigerator in her room where the underclassmen were not. One day she offered a juice to Alex while he was sitting, bored and hot, at the desk. At first he politely refused, but she insisted. She crutched into her room and fetched him a juice, then crutched back out and they drank them in the un-air conditioned barracks hallway and chatted.

It was love at first Capri Sun.

Their romance blossomed when she offered him a grilled cheese. Again, he politely hesitated, but the combination of hunger for favorite childhood snacks and the cute mobility-challenged firstie offering them proved too strong a temptation.

What followed was a whirlwind semester of “cadating” and many more months of waiting and traveling to see one another as often as possible.


The Saturday after Thanksgiving 2013, in Friendswood, Texas, Kelley and Alex's families gathered for a late Thanksgiving celebration. Everyone, except Kelley, knew there would soon be more to celebrate than usual. Alex had convinced Kelley they might get engaged in December, but the clever guy that he is, he had different plans. With a ring he had purchased months before and an antique copy of the book "To Have and To Hold" (with a custom heart carved into the pages holding the ring) he planned a surprise proposal. Parents were included in the planning, permissions were given and siblings were included. At the appointed moment, under the guise of "family portraits" in the Lovely backyard, Alex asked Kelley to be his wife as family watched.

She said "Yes!" and the next part of their journey began.

Alex and Kelley are now rocking the black-gold all the way to the altar.