The Day We Met
On a spring day in 2010, Chiedo and Butsina both showed up to watch a Giants game in San Francisco. Neither being sports fans, they were convinced by mutual friends that an evening game followed by dancing would be fun. After driving to the city and surviving the harrowing experience of trying to parallel park on a steep San Francisco hill, Butsina walked up the hill vowing to never ever park in the city again. When she finally joined with the group of people waiting at the top of the hill, a tall, dark and handsome guy with a nice smile extended his hand and said, “Hi! I’m Chiedo…like the chip!” The next several hours were spent talking, laughing, completely ignoring the baseball game, dancing, and even some turtle watching. By the end the night, Chiedo and Butsina knew they had to see each other again. A couple of weeks later, Chiedo took Butsina on their first date, and thus began the adventures of Butsina and Chiedo.
The First 5 Years
Over the next five years Butsina and Chiedo shared their lives. Butsina moved to Seattle for work in 2011, but even with the distance separating them, Chiedo and Butsina would see each other every month for almost 2 years. Butsina finally moved back to San Francisco to start graduate school, and both she and Chiedo were relieved to be in the same city again. Butsina encouraged Chiedo to travel, and together they ventured to Hawaii, San Diego, Japan, Cabo and Cuba. In January 2016, Chiedo joined Butsina on her first trip back to Kenya (after 16 years away) to meet her family, see the home she grew up in and learn some of her Kenyan traditions.
The Proposal
Chiedo and Butsina are Capricorns with their birthdays two days apart. Since their first year together, they created a birthday tradition where they would celebrate by traveling to a new destination. In December 2015, Chiedo told Butsina that even though there would be no annual birthday trip that year due to conflicting travel plans, he had planned an early birthday date—he called it “the day of firsts”. On December 19, Chiedo woke Butsina up early, for a bicycle-riding lesson (yes, Butsina had never learned how to ride a bicycle), followed by brunch at a new restaurant neither had been to. In the afternoon, they took their first walk together across the Golden Gate Bridge. Afterwards, Chiedo took Butsina to Twin Peaks where he had promised to take her for the past 3 years. As they sat down on top of the hill watching the sun set over the Pacific Ocean, Chiedo got on one knee and asked Butsina to be his wife. It was the perfect surprise!
The Story Continues
Since their engagement in 2015, Chiedo and Butsina have continued to grow and challenge each other to achieve their many life goals. Chiedo began a new job with Twitch (Amazon) as an engineering manager, while Butsina completed her doctoral degree in Nursing and received her National Nurse Practitioner certification. They are both currently training to run a 10-mile race this April, with their eyes set on a half-marathon later this year. They are incredibly excited for the next step in their journey together.
