Brian & Alisha

By the time Alisha and Brian downloaded Hily, they were both on the verge of giving up. Alisha had deleted every other app when a TikTok ad stopped her scrolling. “It was my last-ditch effort,” she says. “After this, if it doesn’t work, I’m just going to adopt three Chihuahuas and be the crazy dog lady.” Brian was fresh off a breakup on the other side of the country in Ohio. “I was relaxing and scrolling through TikTok, and this app’s ad popped up. I thought, ‘Let me try that one. What have I got to lose at this point? All these other ones are garbage.’”

Alisha stood out to him immediately. Their connection felt special. She was open about her life and her kids. They exchanged phone numbers quickly, then started FaceTiming, and by day three, Brian knew. “After about a week, I didn’t think I needed to talk to anybody else ever again,” he says.

There was just one catch: he was in Ohio, and Alisha, raising two young sons, couldn’t leave Florida. The distance made them slow down, with daily calls and months of getting to know each other before meeting in person. Their first date turned into “three or four dates in one,” including a nap. “If you can nap together on the first date,” Alisha says, “you’ve got something.”

Brian didn’t wait long to act. He started driving down every other weekend. He got to become a stepdad … and he loved it. He requested a job transfer and moved to Florida for good. He and Alisha were engaged within three months. “Everybody said it was too quick,” Brian says. “I don’t think so,” Alisha adds.

“I love her smile. I love the way she laughs,” Brian says. Alisha says it’s the small stuff that got her, like how he narrates his texts out loud while typing them. “I’m just staring at him, recording, laughing, in that pure ‘I love you’ admiration mode.”

“We told all of our friends how we met,” Brian says, “and we always finish it with ‘thank God for Hily.'”