NYU graduates Maxwell and Melia were on opposite sides of the globe just two years ago when they struck gold with the Marriage Pact survey. Melia was a junior on the Abu Dhabi campus while Maxwell was a sophomore back in NYC—but the distance didn’t deter them.
How are they doing now, you might ask?
Maxwell:
… We got engaged.
How’s that for an update? The ultimate Marriage Pact success story has finally come to fruition. Of course, we couldn’t expect anything less from Maxwell and Melia, who might be the most obvious soulmates we’ve ever encountered.
I met the pair for the first time last summer, who were coming up on their one-year anniversary. From their overlap in niche interests to their identical religious values and senses of humor, their compatibility was so evident it was almost eerie.
I followed up with Maxwell and Melia this fall, who settled in New York together following Melia’s graduation. The pair excitedly announced they’d gotten engaged the weekend of their second anniversary, with a wedding date set for June 29, 2024. Mark your calendars, folks.
I, of course, asked for details about the engagement. They happily launched into a thorough retelling, still giddy with excitement.
Maxwell:
I asked her dad about proposing ahead of time. I told him that I might do it at Thanksgiving.
Melia:
Which is what he made me think! He made it seem that it wasn't going to be the weekend of our anniversary. He kept being like, “You know, getting engaged around Thanksgiving would be really nice,” and “Getting a custom ring shipped takes forever.” He was just confusing me. I was like, “I don’t wanna wait until Thanksgiving, that’s so far away!” So he fully surprised me.
Maxwell:
I let it slip on accident that I had been at a jewelry store shopping for a ring. But we had discussed it before, so Melia was aware that I would eventually propose. She just didn’t know exactly when.
Melia set the scene for the morning of the proposal.
Melia:
We went up to this adorable little Airbnb in the Catskills for our anniversary weekend. The day of, we went on this cute little hike to the waterfalls. We were getting ready in the morning, and I put on my Adidas three-stripe sweatpants. And he was like, “Don’t wear that, we’re gonna take photos!”
And I was like, “It’s a hike, for one, and two, you hate photos!” Like, we’re not gonna be doing a full-body shot or anything. So instead I put on yoga pants. And he was like, “Are you sure?” And I was like, “Look, babe, I’m not wearing jeans to a waterfall.” And he was like, “Okay, fine, just wear the yoga pants.”
But I still put on my fanny pack. And he just gave up at that point.
Proudly sporting her activewear (fanny pack and all), an unsuspecting Melia set off on the hike of a lifetime with her soon-to-be fiancé.
Melia:
We went on the hike, and he was like, “Let’s take a photo at the waterfall.” And I was like, “Okay, yeah, our parents would wanna see us in this cute little place.”
Maxwell:
There were a lot of people taking photos at the base of the waterfall. So I just went up to this dad who was there with his daughters. And I don’t let him know what’s going on. This is a key detail.
In view of Melia, I ask this man, “Hey! Are you good at taking photos?” He says yes. “Oh, could you take a couple of photos for us?” He says sure. And then I lean into him a little bit, and with a lot of intensity, I say, “Listen, just take a video. Just hit record and don’t stop recording.”
I’m wearing a backpack, and I’m wearing all my hiking gear at this point. I’ve got the full waterproof Gore-Tex style situation. And I’m like, “Let me pop off my backpack for the photos.”
Pop off my backpack, put it on the rock in front of me. I’m like, “Hang on.” Lean down. Side pocket. Ring box. Prepped. One knee. Already there. Just twist. It’s just a 45-degree rotation. I’m facing Melia. Boom. “Will you marry me?” Nothing leading into it. I just opened it and asked her to marry me.
Melia:
And I said yes.
Maxwell:
Thankfully she said yes. I stand up and kiss her, obviously. But I also grab her immediately because I’m terrified she will slip and fall on the wet rocks. When I say we were at the bottom of the waterfall, we were at the bottom of the waterfall. People were slipping who weren’t in a tumultuous state.
Melia:
He thought I was going to faint. I didn’t fall. But on the hike up, I’m giggling so hard. My heart is racing so much. I keep having to sit down. I’m like, “Wait wait wait. I’m getting married.” And I have a Whoop band, which is like a Fitbit,
Maxwell:
Her heart rate was being monitored the whole time.
Melia:
I was like 5 beats away from my max heart rate. We finally got up the hill, and then I started to cry. I was crying laughing. I was doing both at the same time.
Maxwell:
As a quick note, by the way, my heart rate? Steady. Cold as a cucumber. Terminator.
Their families and friends were the first to know (though they figured it was only a matter of time).
Melia:
Everyone was super happy for us.
Maxwell:
Not a single person was surprised.
Melia:
His mom called us afterwards because she knew something had happened. She just had a feeling. When I got back to the hotel, I called my dad and we talked to my family. And right as I was hanging up, Max’s mom called us. And she was like, “Do you have something to tell me?”
Getting engaged was just the cherry on top of Maxwell and Melia’s action-packed summer together, which included a trip to the Southern Caucasus to meet Melia’s godfamily. As it turns out, the pair possess a wealth of knowledge about Georgian history, due in part to their shared Orthodox background.
Melia:
We went to Georgia, the country, earlier in the summer. We had a wonderful, wonderful trip. It was beautiful.
Maxwell:
Yeah, Georgia was really great. Very pretty. The wine there is fantastic. It’s actually where they invented wine.
Melia:
Georgian wine is very famous. We got a bottle of wine made from this specific grape. Stalin was originally from Georgia, and when he was the dictator of the Soviet Union, he decided that all the grapes of this wine he liked in Georgia would exclusively be made into bottles of wine for only him. So we went to this monastery that made wine from that grape.
Maxwell:
The style of wine, by the way, is called Khvanchkara. They only make like, 200 bottles a year.
Melia:
In the whole country. Not just that monastery. That monastery had four. We bought a bottle, which is super cool. But the guy there was like, “It’s so expensive, it’s super super fancy.” And it was like, a 20-dollar bottle of wine.
Maxwell:
Everything’s a lot cheaper in Georgia.
Melia:
There was so, so much wine there. You can get really good cheap wine. We’re still saving that bottle.
Other highlights from their trip included a breathtaking expedition through the heart of the Caucasus Mountains.
Melia:
I think our favorite part of Georgia was when we went up into this nice backpacking hut in the middle of the Caucasus, at like 10,000 feet elevation. It was glamping. Not even glamping, it was like an actual hotel. But it was in the middle of nowhere. We got to go hiking and it was so beautiful.
Maxwell:
We were in a mountain valley in the area near the tallest mountain of the Caucasus. If you’ve ever played the 2011 hit video game Skyrim-
Melia:
It looked exactly like that. We also went to a lot of really important religious sites in Georgia. Georgia is one of the first Christian countries. The woman who evangelized Georgia is named St. Nino, and we saw her body, which was really cool. We did a lot of pilgrimage-type stuff with my godfamily, which was really important and wonderful for us.
Maxwell:
We did drink from a couple of holy mountain springs.
Melia:
We drank a lot of holy water. But we loved Georgia. It was a really great trip, and it was really important for him to meet my godfamily. They loved him, obviously. He’s a part of the family now.
Maxwell:
Georgia is definitely in the top ten places to go. Don’t tell anyone though. I want the bottles of wine to continue being 20 dollars.
Engaged life has been treating Maxwell and Melia splendidly. Their current lineup of activities includes brewing Kombucha, putting each other on to their favorite video games, and obsessing over an internet phenomenon known as Fat Bear Week.
Maxwell:
We should mention the sheer amount of time these days we spend talking about bears.
Melia:
We have a mild—well, not mild. Just a full-blown obsession with bears right now. Fat Bear Week is an annual event at this national park in Alaska in October. They take photos of the bears as they grow, and you can vote for which bear is the most chubby. They have a March Madness bracket you can fill out. It was a thing we did early in our relationship, and we really bonded over it. So now it’s a tradition.
Maxwell:
We do a March Madness competition, and the loser pays for all-you-can-eat sushi. The idea being you eat a bunch of raw salmon.
Melia:
Before I met Max, I was also obsessed with a bear rescue in Tennessee. They post these updates nearly every day where they give a description of the cubs and what they did that day. It was adorable. But we’ve started doing this thing where I just read them to Max every night.
Maxwell:
She just lets me know what the bears are up to.
One thing’s for certain: if any two people were made for each other, it’d be Maxwell and Melia.
Melia:
Both of us really complement each other, but I think he especially compliments me. When I’m anxious and kind of overthinking things, Max has always been a very stable person for me. That’s kind of what you need in a relationship. Max also makes me feel very safe. We just have this great space to grow together in our relationship as we go through marriage.
I think we’ve both fit into each other’s families quite well, which I think is really important. We’re both really excited to start our own family at some point down the line.
Max:
For me, I’m kind of a dumbass. Melia’s smart. So there’s also that.
Before ending the call, I asked Maxwell and Melia what they’d say to other long-distance Marriage Pact matches. Their answers did not disappoint.
Melia:
If other people didn’t talk to their match, that’s on them. They should’ve reached out.
Maxwell:
We just work harder. We’re in it to win it.
Melia:
We’re on the marriage grindset.
Maxwell:
Talent doesn’t beat hard work when talent doesn’t work hard. You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.
Melia:
Yeah. If you don’t hit send on the message to your possible future wife, you miss out.
Like Maxwell said, he and Melia only take Ws as a couple. The pair certainly hit the jackpot—but then again, no one could be more deserving.