But Aaron didn’t belong on the plains. He was cold, and whatever he was running from didn’t seem that scary after a year apart. So, with very little coaxing, Aaron transferred to Appalachian State University, where, lucky enough, his childhood friend, Koby Ellick, and his best friends from high school, Brian Appleyard and Jake Holtzer, joined forces to found the newest chapter of the Alpha Epsilon Pi fraternity. So, he was sure to get a bid.

Although close, it never felt close enough. Madison and Aaron were 4 hours apart. Needless to say, they both spent many late hours driving on I-77 just to be with each other for even one night.

They say that distance makes the heart grow fonder, but they conveniently leave out that distance also makes the mind grow crazier.

Fast forward to 2020, the year of Aaron and Madison’s graduation. I use the term graduation loosely, as a pandemic had other plans, which meant they finished college four months early. Luckily, they both had good jobs lined up, so they spent those months together, living in a frozen moment before the real world resumed. Madison accepted a challenging assignment in July 2020, starting in the COVID ICU, fresh out of Nursing school and not knowing what she had signed up for. Aaron, you guessed it, was off across the country again to build solar farms in California. Thankfully, during those lonely times and hardships, Madison met one of her closest confidants in the trenches of that ICU: Sierra.

Over the next two years, Aaron and Madison only saw each other every other weekend—52 days out of the year. If those who say distance makes the heart grow fonder are correct, then Aaron and Madison’s hearts probably couldn’t get any fonder.

One night at Madison’s grandmother Helene’s house, it was mentioned how funny it was that her grandmother had only ever known one other person with the last name Lipsitz, back in 1960 in Lebanon, PA. Hold on to your hats, folks; here’s where it gets weird. Just like Madison’s mom, Aaron’s dad happened to be born in this little hamlet in central Pennsylvania, where his father turned out to be the local rabbi. Fifty-five years before Aaron and Madison even met, his grandfather, Jerome Lipsitz, officiated the marriage of Helene and Nat, Madison’s grandparents.

Today, Madison and Aaron are getting married on the farm originally purchased by her grandfather.

Photos