The Farrells
RSVPMeet us in the desert
Days
Hours
Minutes
Seconds
Today is the day.
Our Story
Kyle and Denae saw each other for the first time during their freshman year of high school in the waiting area outside the Notre Dame Preparatory gym. Denae was getting ready to begin volleyball practice, while Kyle had come inside for water after a running warm-up for football practice. At just 14 years old, neither of them could have known how much life they would eventually share.
During their freshman and sophomore years, they moved in separate circles. But during the second half of high school, Denae found herself looking for friendship in new places and grew closer with her volleyball teammates. One of those teammates was Carter Gray (CC), now Denae’s Maid of Honor, who had grown up with Kyle and known him since early childhood.
On February 1, 2020, CC invited Denae to spend time with her friend group. That evening, Denae saw Kyle again. She left that night feeling like she had stumbled into a group of people who would become her very best friends (many of whom are now standing beside them in their wedding party), but she also couldn’t help but notice that Kyle seemed very different from the boy she remembered from freshman year.
Now 16 and 17 years old, Kyle and Denae became close friends (to the best of their ability with a global pandemic unfolding around them). As the months passed, their friendship slowly began to feel like something more. The more time they spent together, the more time they wanted together, and on December 20, 2020, after finishing their final high school football and volleyball seasons, they officially began dating.
They spent the next five months making the most of their time together, going to senior prom and graduating high school side by side. Neither of them knew exactly what the future would hold, but they knew what they had was too special to walk away from.
When Denae chose Pepperdine University in Malibu, California, and Kyle chose Arizona State University in Arizona, they knew that decision would mean years of long distance. Still, they chose to take it on. Over the next four years, they grew from teenagers into adults, learned to build lives of their own, deepened their faith, pursued their individual dreams, and continued learning how to choose one another through distance and change.
By the time they reached the end of college, they had spent much of their relationship counting down the days until they could finally live in the same place. So as graduation approached, Denae wanted to commemorate a chapter that had shaped so much of their relationship by taking graduation photos together, one Pepperdine graduate and one Arizona State graduate, finally standing side by side at the finish line.
Little did she know, that idea would lead to her unknowingly helping plan the beginning of their next chapter.
The Proposal
Behind the scenes, Kyle had decided that their graduation photos were the perfect opportunity to ask Denae to marry him. After four years of going back and forth between two states, they were graduating, returning home, and preparing to do everyday life in the same place for the first time since high school. To Kyle, there could not have been a better moment to ask her to make that permanent.
While taking their graduation photos at Papago Park in Phoenix, Arizona, they slowly made their way around the mountain. After turning a corner, Denae saw an arrangement of flowers and candles, all secretly set up beforehand by CC and Denae’s mom, Denise. Denae immediately began crying. Through the tears, all she could manage to ask was, “Is that for me?”
Kyle got down on one knee and told her that he had loved her every day since high school, that he would continue to love her and choose her every day, and that she was both the love of his life and his best friend. Then he asked her to marry him. She said yes.
But Kyle still had one more surprise waiting. Afterward, their local family gathered together for champagne and appetizers to celebrate the beginning of this new chapter with them.
Their nearly two-year engagement has already held a story of its own. Together, they have walked across Spain on El Camino de Santiago, begun their careers (Kyle in commercial real estate with Avison Young and Denae in entrepreneurship alongside her mom, Denise, through Deeply From The Heart) and finally gotten to experience everyday life in the same place. After so many years of long distance, there has been something especially sweet about simply getting to build a life side by side.
And on March 13, 2027, nearly a decade after they first crossed paths as freshmen in high school, Kyle and Denae will finally become husband and wife.
Through every chapter, Kyle and Denae have been surrounded by people who have loved them, encouraged them, prayed for them, and celebrated alongside them. They feel incredibly lucky to have so many of those people gathered together as they begin this next chapter, and they cannot wait to celebrate with all of you.
