Listening to Audio Adrenaline and remembering how I fell in love.

I’m listening to Audio Adrenaline as I work today. They say hearing and smelling are our most nostalgic senses. Whenever I smell sunscreen or coconut I am immediately taken back to all the hundreds of wonderful memories I have of the Caribbean. Sometimes I’ll walk into a room with a certain scent and I’m immediately back in my grandmother’s house.

When I listen to Audio Adrenaline I am a rush of memories and happy tears.

Nothing brings me back to sixteen years old like Audio Adrenaline.

Nothing brings me back to the moments I was falling in love with my husband like Audio Adrenaline.

It was July of 1999. I was thirteen and babysitting the neighbor kids. They were watching a movie and I decided to get on the computer and log onto the newest thing, AOL Instant Messenger. Don’t laugh. Okay, laugh. It was the new way to talk to all your friends if you were cool. And I was cool. That afternoon none of my friends were online so I decided to try out the Search option for fun. I typed in “soccer” and all the screen names of people with “soccer” as one of their interests popped up.

I clicked on the first screen name on the list- “krosschek6” and said “Hi”.

“Krosschek6”, also known as Matt, was 14, loved soccer like me, lived in Washington D.C. and in the months that followed, became the most amazing thing in the world to me. We began talking on the computer daily, eventually moved to daily phone conversations, snail mail and this photo that he sent me of him playing his guitar. I was as smitten as any 13 year old girl could be.

(I’m pretty sure he definitely wouldn’t want this photo made public but he gave it to me so it’s his own fault :)

By 2001 we had known each other for two years and we were best friends. That summer he was diagnosed with cancer and my world fell apart. Going through those months with him, watching his strength as he endured chemotherapy, surgeries and pain, I knew this was a person I could not lose.

On May 25, 2002, Matt walked off a little red airplane into my hometown airport. He was carrying a red bag and when he hugged me, he kissed my hair and I knew my world was changed.

From that day on, we began flying back and forth to see each other between Iowa and Virgina. And when we were together, we would get in the car and just drive for hours. Just to be together. And Listen to Audio Adrenaline.

Four years later he asked me to be his wife in Paris, France.

And five years to the date of first seeing each other in person, on May 25, 2007, we were married.

It’s been 11 years since that day when out of all people in the world, I found him. 11 years since that day when God let us find each other.

And today as I’m listening to Audio Adrenaline as I work, I look at him and smile, and it all comes rushing back.

Nashville wedding photographer, Kristyn Hogan, documents the beauty, the life and the story of weddings and people in Nashville, Tennessee, Iowa and destinations worldwide.