Beck: When did you two meet, and where were you at in terms of your faith at that time?

Ariane: My junior year at the University of Utah, I was looking for a roommate, and I answered Stephanie’s ad from the university’s Institute program, which is like seminary but for college. My parents had divorced a few years earlier. That was hard for me, because most of my friend’s parents hadn’t been through divorce. After the divorce, both my mom and dad left the Church. I was still struggling with my faith. Steph, now I’ll turn it over to you. I love how you talk about how we met.

Stephanie: I love this story too. Ariane’s posture is always very forward. She has a lot of excited energy. I open the door, and she’s leaning forward. She has these huge brown eyes, and this gorgeous red hair, and she was just like, “I’m here, I’m your best friend, we found each other, let me move my stuff in right now.” I was like, This is my girl.

Ariane: Needless to say, she chose me as her roommate. We immediately became best friends.

Stephanie: I will say, even if you are questioning your faith, it’s really normal for high-school and college kids to still be trying to assimilate to the culture around you. Ariane, I had no idea you were questioning, none. People knew about me because of John, the Catholic who lived next door to my grandma. We had decided to be together after our freshman year. We did long distance; he was at Notre Dame, and I was at University of Utah. Back to the old theory of you marry who you date, it was problematic, but no one ever really told me I couldn’t date him, because I was 20. You can’t really tell an adult what they can and can’t do. We decided that we didn’t care about the Romeo and Juliet vibe we were getting from everyone, and we were just going to be together.

Beck: So when you guys were younger, your parents didn’t really approve?

Stephanie: No, we just sort of knew. They didn’t have to be explicit about it. You just know that you don’t marry outside of your faith. They didn’t need to be specific about John. But they liked him, and they liked his family.

Beck: People knew that you were dating John, so they knew maybe you were not as close to the faith as they were?

Stephanie: Yeah, but I was still passing. I was still going to church and doing all this stuff to remain worthy. Ariane, do you remember that conversation when I was ironing? We’d lived together for a couple of months. You asked me, “So you are not going to get married in the temple?” I was like, “I don’t think so.” It was so traumatic for me to say that out loud.

That’s also when I started getting the sense that you were so smart and curious and worldly, and that it would be difficult for you to just get married and have babies. There’s a lot of people for whom that’s a very happy eventuality, but it didn’t seem like it was your eventuality.