It's the oldest story in the [modern-day] book.
Boy meets girl — online.
NOPE. Not like that.
There were no dating apps involved. No one slid into anyone's DMs or stumbled upon a “thirst trap” photo on a mutual friend’s wall and thought, well, hello there. There were no singles forums and no chat rooms for partnerless hopefuls "seeking a connection." None of the usual suspects.
So scratch that — maybe it's not the oldest story in the book after all.
Because Alyssa and Theo…(wait for it)…met on a Zoom call.
But hold on, it gets even more romantic than that.
The meeting was entirely about cryptocurrency.
(Cue the songbirds.)
So how exactly does a group of crypto geeks rattling on about blockchains and dApps from their squeaky desk chairs, collectively dreaming of going "to the moon" with their group investment in a crypto hedge fund, eventually lead us here? Pondering wedding outfits and room blocks and hoping the DJ doesn't play the Cha Cha Slide? (Spoiler: he won't. He's great.)
Well, friends — tuck in. It's a nearly five-year story.
Just kidding. We’ll summarize. You have enough reading ahead of you on this site (which, by the way, Alyssa would really appreciate it if you did, so she doesn't have to field 2,369 questions that are already answered here. But don't tell her we told you that.)
Actually, someone did think, well, hello there, on that pivotal call that day. It just wasn't followed by a DM, or a “hook us up” nudge to a mutual friend, or any follow-up whatsoever.
It was Theo. Theo thought it. And Theo refrained from any follow-up.
Here's what happened:
The Sunday night hedge fund meeting was led by two group leaders, cameras and mics mostly off throughout. Then came time for questions and comments.
Naturally, Alyssa had questions and comments.
On went her camera. On went her mic. And she launched — excitedly, passionately — into her vision of the future: all of them, one day, living as neighbors in sprawling houses right on the edge of Lake Tahoe, just as soon as their fund went "parabolic."
Cue Theo's well, hello there. He made a mental note: cute girl who’s into crypto and lake living, is super upbeat and bubbly, could be future wife.
And that was the gist of it. Their kinda-sorta “meet cute” minus the “meet” part. Theo’s camera or mic never went on. Alyssa had landed on Theo’s radar (with a loud thud), but for Alyssa, Theo simply did not exist yet. Not for some time after.
Fast forward a couple of months — don't worry, you didn’t miss anything. Er well, just a world pandemic — no big deal. But literally a whole lotta sitting around doing a whole lotta nothing.
After one too many continuous days of bad attempts at sourdough, doomscrolling, and Zoom sing-alongs with old camp friends in her pajamas at 2pm, Alyssa packed a bag and left her New Jersey beach town for Phoenix — to stay with her sister, see the one friend she had there, and wait out whatever the hell was happening to the world.
One afternoon, she and that Phoenix friend were hanging out poolside, sipping watermelon margaritas, and catching one another up on the latest season of their lives, when the friend slipped inside to take a FaceTime call with a business associate. Their voices drifted faintly from the house while Alyssa swung on a hammock, soaking up the sweet desert heat and contemplating a second marg.
"Oh crap, it's 3 o'clock — I have another meeting!" the friend shrieked from within the kitchen.
Then she came rushing back out, shoved the phone into Alyssa's hands, and demanded: "Here. Chat with my friend, Theo. I gotta go!”
Alyssa brought the phone up to her face, flustered and perplexed, and stammered: "Uhhh — hello? Whooo is this??"
However flustered Alyssa was, Theo was a hundred times that.
Because it was the girl — that girl. He'd thought about her since she'd appeared in a little square on his screen months before. He'd thought about reaching out. He'd thought about Lake Tahoe, and strolling through farmers' markets hand-in-hand, and geeking out about crypto together. All just thoughts, until this moment.
To this day, no one knows why the friend handed Theo off to a stranger instead of simply saying goodbye. Not even the friend. She just shrugs and says, "I dunno — that's just what I thought to do."
Fate. Wearing a sundress. By a pool. In Phoenix.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
So — clearly, they hit it off. (I mean, we're here, right?)
Now, a small but important detail worth backing up for:
The mutual friend who so unceremoniously shoved that phone into Alyssa's hands? She was also one of the two leaders of that Sunday night crypto call. Which means Theo wasn't some random stranger on the other end of that FaceTime — he was someone she'd brought on to freelance for a separate crypto project she was running. Small world. Smaller than a Zoom grid, even.
So when Theo mentioned, somewhere in that first bewildered ten minutes of conversation, that he recognized Alyssa from the fund meeting, she found it interesting, mostly because she had zero memory of him. (He left out the part about the mental note. And the Lake Tahoe daydream. And the future wife thing. Smart man.)
They exchanged numbers as potential colleagues — Alyssa was considering jumping onto the same freelance project — and left it at that.
Or so she thought.
What followed was a FaceTime a day. Sometimes two. Each one running a half hour, an hour, longer. They made each other laugh. They got each other's idiosyncratic references and dry jokes. They had the same taste in everything that mattered and clashed in all the ways that turned out to be interesting — Alyssa loud and wired and all-in, Theo laidback, measured, a little quieter, a little harder to read. Yin, meet yang.
And then, about a week in, Theo floated an idea.
A wild idea. Impractical, ballsy even. (Apparently, knowing her was already changing him for the better.)
See, he'd been tapped to attend a crypto conference in Miami — officially for the startup, unofficially for a good time. The conference was called, and we are not making this up, Shitcoin Conference 2020. And he wanted Alyssa to come.
He didn’t just ask. He campaigned. He made his case over multiple calls, video chats, texts, and emails across multiple days, dismantling her objections one by one like a very charming attorney. It was Covid. She wasn't working (in the regular sense anyway — anything she needed to tend to, she could do so quickly from a laptop). Flights were cheap. She had the means. He had the accommodations, the tickets, the VIP access to the open bar, a built-in excuse to be there — it could even be a tax write-off, for crying out loud.
Each call, her "no" got a little softer. A little less convincing. Mostly to herself.
But before she said yes, she had one condition.See, Alyssa's love language is play. Fun. Whimsy. Silliness. The kind of childlike, full-body laugh that makes you snort. And she needed to know if this guy had it in him. So she told him:
"OK, fine. But our first night out, we're wearing onesies. Silly animal onesies. I pick. What's your size?"
He paused a few seconds to process the strange request, and then a resounding: "YOU'RE ON."
The next day, a lemur onesie in size large arrived at his door in Nashville. Alyssa packed a green dinosaur one into her suitcase — already half-packed, since this was essentially a vacation within a vacation — and headed to Phoenix Sky Harbor, bound for Miami, stomach and heart done things they hadn't done in a while.
Neither of them could tell you what the in-flight movie was or if they sat next to someone. All they felt and thought about was their rattling nerves. The good kind. The kind that means something big is coming.
At baggage claim, she spotted him first — sauntering toward her from across the terminal. And when he got close enough, she giggled and squealed, "It's you! Hi!" — because what else do you say?
He scooped her up. Hugged her tight. Gave her a hard smooch on the cheek, then the forehead.
And then, before either of them had a chance to be awkward about it, Alyssa turned around, pressed her back into him, held up her phone, and took a picture, because something inside told her she’d want that later. A snapshot of the first seconds. The first real hello. The first kiss — sort of — right there in the airport, two people who'd secretly, quickly, completely fallen for each other over FaceTime, about to walk into the most absurd first date imaginable.
A crypto conference. In Miami. In onesies.
Romance doesn’t always look the same for everyone. Sometimes it shows up in a lemur costume.