Falling in love with Jordan Kocsis was the easiest thing I have ever done and the greatest honor of my life. Getting to know and love him and spend the rest of my life with him is the most incredible gift I have ever received apart from amazing grace. I just think everyone should get to know him because man it is such a blessing!!!
I met Jordan at a young life pickleball tournament, after having just come back from volunteering at a church youth retreat. One of the first things we bonded over was our mutual middle school friends, as Jordan was a young life leader for the some of the same middle schoolers I led at church. I just thought Jordan was the coolest, sweetest, cutest person I had ever met in my life. I loved the way he talked about leading for young life, his love for kids and his love Jesus. We talked for a while sitting on the courts in the sun, and I kept waiting and waiting for Jordan to ask for my number! Eventually, he had to go play a game for the tournament and he still hadn’t gotten my number. I lingered around hoping I would run into him again, but eventually had to leave. The whole time I walked and drove away, I was looking over my shoulder hoping I would see him! After the pickleball tournament, a few weeks went by and my sorority formal was coming up. One night, I asked my friend(now one of my maids of honor) Caroline Newsom for Jordan’s number so I could ask him to formal. I put his number in my phone but was wayyy too nervous to text him at the time. I didn’t think someone so sweet and wonderful would be available! However, before I had worked up the courage to text him, the very next morning, I saw a text on my phone from Jordan Kocsis! Unknown to me, he had gotten my number from another mutual friend(MC Simons;). He said that he had loved talking to me at the pickleball tournament and wanted to take me on a date! I was pumped- He was the cute boy I met at a pickleball tournament who I thought I would never see again because he was wayyyy too cute and awesome and sweet to be into me. I was pinching myself thinking that it was a dream, I just couldn’t believe that this smart, God fearing, adorable, wonderful person wanted to spend time with ME. But he did and I am so grateful!! Our first date was incredible and sweet and silly and full of joy. Jordan picked me up and took me to coffee, bought me an ice white chocolate mocha and then took me to a little hidden table on a balcony overlooking the Oxford square. We talked about movies, Jesus, families, our hometowns, Taylor Swift, and so much more. I had never so instantly connected with a person. Jordan made me laugh and smile more than I even knew was possible!! His joy and enthusiasm for life was contagious. One of the many, many things I instantly loved about him was the confidence that he had that so evidently didn’t come from he who is but who Jesus is. I remember admiring that confidence so much and wanting to be around him all the time and become more like that! In the words of me telling everyone how amazing he is when we first started dating: “I just see Jesus in all of his words and actions. I wanna be more like him.” Jordan and I continued going on dates and every moment with him showed me more and more that he was exactly the person I wanted to marry. He constantly and consistently showed me grace through all my shortcomings, supported me through everything, showed me immense patience, pointed me towards Christ in every situation, and went out of his way to serve and love me well. In everything, he showed me unconditional love. Every moment with him did and still does feel like absolute sunshine and pure joy!! I just couldn’t wait to introduce him to everyone I knew because I just knew knowing him would make their lives better. I even started telling friends I loved him and was going to marry him not even a month after we had started dating. Being around him was and is still so wonderfully easy and fun and life giving and laughter filled and Christ centered and makes me a better person, the most myself, and the least anxious. I love so much more about him, and I find a new quality of his to admire almost every day that I’m with him. He is patient, kind, gentle, sweet, outgoing, funny, energetic, considerate, incredibly servant hearted, loyal, hyper in the best way, generous, SO smart(I mean he literally does heart surgery and makes maps of hearts for a living) humble, hard working, gracious, and loves me so unconditionally… and I cant wait to discover more and more of his extraordinary qualities every day for the rest of our lives and become a little bit more like him every day. At the beginning of our relationship, I started keeping a list of the above and beyond just incredibly sweet and thoughtful things Jordan did for because I was so blown away by them. But they happened so often and so quickly that I had to stop writing them all down because I just couldn’t keep up! There was way too many insanely kind things he did for me to keep track! Just a few of those on that list include: completely moving every single piece of clothing and furniture I own into my new house while I was at work, examining a nasty rash I had and googling every remedy possible, buying me a huge box of hangers and spending a whole day hanging up all my clothes in my closet that were in random piles in my storage unit, stopping every time he sees flowers to pick some for me, writing me a jar full of sticky notes with Bible verses and encouragements written on each one of them, getting on the nasty floor of my car to get under the wheel to try to fix my broken brakes, the list goes on and on and on. Jordan, I hope I can serve you even half as well as you serve me and all the people you love. You serve with so much joy and grace and enthusiasm and without asking anything in return. I love you more than I ever thought possible!!! You always point me to Christ with so much grace in every single circumstance and there is no one else in the world I would rather spend the rest of my life with. You make everything more fun and every single day a joy. I am the best version of myself when I am with you. Here’s to us being the last ones still talking to people at the end of every function forever. You are everything I have ever wanted and abundantly more!!! I cannot thank Jesus enough for giving me you.

Jordan side
In the fall of 2022, during the fall semester of my senior year at Ole Miss, I went to a party after a concert in Oxford. There, hanging out with one of my best friends Eli King, I saw the most beautiful girl I ever seen. Naturally, I asked “Hey who is that?” to Eli and he responded with “that’s Abbay Kellum, don’t worry about it bro.” Taking his response to heart, I didn’t go up and talk to her. About a month later at an open mic night at the Oxford Lodge, I saw the same beautiful girl and again I was standing next to Eli. History repeated itself as I asked about her again, and he responded with “don’t worry about it bro.” I went about my business the rest of this semester until it was a little while into the next one when I was at a young life pickleball tournament fundraiser and saw the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen again, for the third time. Ironically enough when I saw her I was standing next to EIi once again. I mentioned this to him one more time, expecting the same response. But instead of “don’t worry about it bro” he told me that some circumstances changed. After hearing this, I thought in my head that I would go up and talk to her, and then quickly thought to myself that I would have no shot with someone that beautiful. But a little while later I found myself sitting between my matches, watching a friend named Koichi play one of his matches. I looked up, and I saw this beautiful girl standing beside me, and I uttered the words (not smoothly) “hey, are you playing in this?” and hear the response of “no I’m just here to watch” and then watch as she sits down next to me. After having the most enjoyable introductory conversation I’ve ever experienced, I had to go play another match, and I made the mistake of not asking for her number. As the day went on I was looking around for her and sadly did not see her again. After a trip to Columbia, Tennessee with some friends and another week of thinking about that wonderful conversation with that beautiful girl, I still had humongous crush on Abbay, and was thinking to myself that I would regret if I didn’t do anything about it. I asked our mutual friend MC for Abbay’s number, knowing it would be a longshot for anything to work out, and fired off a text to Abbay asking her out on a date to get coffee. She answered very quickly, and said yes! I couldn’t believe it! The date ended up being more than just coffee, as neither of us wanted to stop talking each each other. We ended up also getting dinner at Ajax and went to a Good Friday church service at Christ Pres. Many more dates followed and ever since that first date, I’ve had the pleasure of spending so much time with my best friend, and I cannot wait to spend the rest of my life with her. She is different than anyone I’ve ever met as she is the most loving, kind, patient, God-fearing, Jesus loving, bright, sunny, and joyous person. Loving someone like Abbay has never felt more easy or natural!