Our Story

The story of how we met starts off like many other days — Kirsten is on the phone with her mum. Deep in conversation, she is outside, the sun on her skin, and she is walking in the direction of... well, not the date she's now running late for. After a panicked moment of realisation and a brisk walk in the correct direction, she arrives at Colectivo Coffee on Clark.

The story of how we met, however, actually starts with the story of how we almost didn't meet. Mike grew up in the UK, and it was only through a fortuitous work opportunity that he ended up in the US. Kirsten had originally moved to Chicago after graduating, but was starting to toy with the idea of moving elsewhere for grad school. Fortunately, both of us found ourselves in the right place, at the right time.

It's 2022, the tail-end of the pandemic — restaurants are mostly open again, people are enjoying the Chicago summer, and there's no longer an overwhelming urge to cleanse one's hands with sanitiser after touching a door handle. In spite of this, COVID was definitely still something you didn't want to catch. So it was saddening when we had to postpone our first date due to a COVID-scare. Rescheduling was tricky — travel and work conspired against us. Stop. Start. Stop.

Standing in line at the coffee shop, Kirsten recalls looking flustered, and a little sweaty from the speed-walking. Mike just remembers the kind, big, blue eyes beaming at him. Two coffees later (black, please!) and we're sat outside, riffing about what makes the perfect city, light-roast versus dark-roast, right-to-repair laws, and composting. So lost in conversation were we that we almost forgot to exchange numbers at the end.

There's a moment when you know you've found the one. For us, that moment was our trip to the REDUCE WASTE CHICAGO NORTH CENTER SUSTAINABILITY MARKET. The date had seemed like a good idea at the time, but cycling over to meet up, Mike had ample time to contemplate on what planet would a girl be interested in going to a fair where probably the most exciting thing we would see would be a pair of socks made from up-cycled plastic bottles scooped out of the Chicago river— what had he been thinking? Frankly, such a date would have been the death-knell for most relationships. Together, we bounced from one stand to the next. We had a blast.

After that, the rest is truly a blur. We've had so many highs: cosy log cabin stays in Michigan, surfing in Costa Rica, hiking to Machu Picchu. Even the lows (jointly surviving a short-but-viscious bout with toxic squash syndrome, sitting on opposite ends of the porch during an early date because one of us had COVID but we still desperately wanted to see each other, a particularly ambitious hike followed by a night under the stars and the guest appearence of one curious slug) have only brought us closer together.

Woven throughout all of that though, is a common thread of curiosity and wonderment about our world; always questioning; always wanting to learn more. Curiosity is what brings us together, and it's what we want to share with you — our friends and family.