Jason and Kat officially met back in 2015 when they were set up as prom dates by their best friends Kellie & Scotty. Jason decided to ask Kat to prom by dressing in a cut-off flannel and jorts, while hanging out of the sunroof of a car as 'Your Man' by Josh Turner blasted in the background.

A visual of the cut-off flannel and jorts.

Prom day came and the two had a blast. And, apparently, so did their fathers. Kat and Jason returned home from prom to grab some things for the after-party, only to find Al still at the Mena's, 5 hours after everyone had left, bonding with Rey over funk music. It was in that moment, the families started to hope, potentially for their own sake, that something more would brew between the two.

Unfortunately for the parents, Jason was off to college at ISU while Kat stayed back in Barrington for her senior year of high school. But they continued to stay in touch, texting and snapchatting almost every day while Jason was at school.

Kat and Jason would hangout every time Jason returned home, with Jason bringing his college friends over to Kat's so they could meet his "best girl friend from home."

The school year came to an end and the chemistry between the two became obvious to Kat's friends and family as they watched them bounce from conversation to conversation together at her high school graduation party. It was around that same time that Jason started to wonder if there could be something more.

About a month later, Jason decided to shoot his shot and see if there was more to be explored between the couple. But Kat, a newly-graduated-high-school-senior with a realistic outlook on the future, friendzoned him with a text that, to this day, did not tell a lie. (This screenshot was retrieved 5 years later because Jason never deleted his texts. Crazy ik. Lol.) Jason took the friendzoning like a champ and the two carried on as usual.

The pair continued to stay in touch once Kat went to college, with the two facetiming multiple times a week. This started to spark curiosity among her new college friends, with them questioning if there was more to her "best guy friend from home".

Kat continued to deny they were anything more than friends until the spring of 2017 when Kat learned that Jason had moved on, and things seemed serious this time. It was in that moment she realized that she DID have feelings for him, but it was too late and she missed her opportunity to tell him. She cried a bit and then decided it must've not been God's plan for her (or at least not right now).

The rest of 2017 - 2019 the two kept in touch but not nearly to the extent that they used to. While both Kat & Jason were happy in new relationships, their families kept the hope alive of the two ending up together. Unbeknownst to her, Kat's family specifically coined the term "Not Jason" to describe all potential love interests that were... you guessed it! Not Jason.

In the Fall of 2019, Kat and Jason both happened to be moving to California. Kat to SF to work at a startup for the semester and Jason to LA to play football at UCLA. With both of their friends and loved ones back in the midwest, the two started catching up more frequently, primarily bonding over life in California.

By January, Kat was back at school in Ohio and recently single. On Valentine's Day, Kat found herself pondering her love life. It was that day that she realized that no man has ever and will ever come close to Jason. As she indicated in the Great Friendzoning Text of 2016, he was the person she saw things with long term. He's the person she would ultimately want to marry. The only problem was that he lived across the country, had a girlfriend, and had zero idea Kat ever saw him as more than a friend. The odds were definitely not in her favor, but where there's a will there's a way.

A month after her big revelation (that Jason still knew absolutely nothing about), the world shut down from COVID. At this point, Kat had shared her revelation with her best friend and roommate (the same curious one from Freshman year), who encouraged her to let Jason know how she felt.

After months of prayer and watching Thomas Rhett's 'Marry Me' music video on repeat, Kat hit her breaking point. She had to tell him how she felt, even if he didn't feel the same way. She crafted a long message, laying out years of feelings, and let him know that given her feelings they shouldn't be friends anymore. Jason was, expectedly, STUNNED, as this was all new news to him, but agreed that it was what was best given the circumstances.

One long year later, Kat officially made it out of the friendzone. Jason flew to Chicago, they went on their first official date at Etta in River North during a torrential down pour. Over the next year, Jason moved back to Chicago, ending the long distance nature of their years-long relationship.