- This is not yours.
- This is it. You're my best friend, I love you.
- Baby.
- Melody, will you marry me? - Oh my gosh.
(peaceful music)
You ready?
(Melody squeals)
- We got it.
- My name is Jason.
I am the CEO and founder of Jubilee Media.
- My name is Melody and I am Jason's fiancee and...
- Amazing human being
- A good human.
- Hey good humans. What's up, good humans?
Good humans. Hello, good humans.
- Hello. - Yeah, that's right.
What kind of music you gonna listen to?
- Should we listen to our playlist?
- Oh, yeah.
- On both sides? - I think so.
- Can you hear me?
No.
- What did you say? - I didn't.
- Did you say something sweet to me?
- No. (Melody chuckles)
Never. - That's not...
(Jason chuckles)
- We met on Twitter.
Jason, I guess, saw a video of me on Facebook.
I'm a reporter, so I was interviewing someone
and Jason basically saw the video, found me on Twitter
and started Tweeting at me publicly.
And then a couple months after that, he DMed me on Twitter,
being like, "I'm in New York, would love to grab a coffee.
I'm a huge fan of your work."
That's how we met.
(upbeat music)
- I was actually scrolling on Facebook
and there was this Facebook advertisement video.
And I was like, "Oh my God, this woman's really beautiful."
Because I'd clicked on the ad,
every day it started feeding me the ad over and over again.
When I was in New York for a wedding,
I actually sent her DM then.
And as soon as I saw her
we just had like amazing conversation.
And then suddenly the bartender was like,
"Hey, we're closing."
We went to another bar.
We closed that bar out.
And then there were no, it was like five in the morning.
And then we ended up going to a little bodega
and getting Twizzlers.
We got some apple cider and we walked around to Central Park
until it was like 7:00 AM,
and then I had to go and pack and fly out.
- But that wasn't technically our first date.
That was like our first meet up.
- No, that was a date. - Would you call that
our first date? - Yeah.
- Okay. - I thought it was a date.
- I didn't think it was a date.
I thought it was like a networking drink at midnight.
I felt very non-committal. - Right.
- 'Cause it was the first window
where I was like seriously single,
and I think I was...
- You were just having a good time.
- Yeah, I was just trying to not be tethered.
- Yeah. - Especially, to be honest,
to someone who literally is across the country.
- Actually we had, together, we just planned
to go on a random weekend trip to San Diego.
She'll probably tell you this
but the whole weekend, I was like wrecked.
We were going out to dinner. I was like, I had no appetite.
She was like, let's go for drinks.
I couldn't even drink anything.
I was so nervous the entire time.
- Two of my close friends from college,
they texted me being like, "What is this weekend?
Are you guys getting engaged?"
I was like, "Nah".
- I had planned a nice dinner.
And before that I was like,
"Oh, let's go drop by the cliffs."
Our team had set up a little blanket
with music and champagne.
We literally walk across it.
She goes, "What is this?"
I go, "This is for us".
She goes, "No".
- What is this situation?
- This is not yours. - Yeah, it is.
- No.
- He was like, "Look, it's for us."
I was like, "No, that's not for us"
and I kind of tried to keep him going.
And that's when he pulled me over, showed me a journal.
- And then I like literally blacked out.
And I tried to say all this stuff
but really I just said, "Hey, will you marry me?"
- And so obviously I said, "Yes".
My ring is getting resized
so I don't have it here to flash to the world.
- I told you, I was like a wreck the entire weekend.
And that afternoon we were at church
and in church there's praise time,
which is when the music happens and stuff.
And literally, we were holding hands, I think,
we were next to each other.
And I remember thinking,
"Wow, today I'm gonna ask her to marry me".
You know, you spend your entire life
looking for, I think, two things,
your passion and your person.
And I feel like I felt so blessed
to find both of those things.
Yes, I would say so.
When I first knew that I wanted to marry Mel,
I felt like it was really important
for me to go and ask her parents for permission.
And I had spent a lot of time with her family
but her dad travels quite a bit for work.
Long story short, when I went to go ask for permission,
he said, no.
And I was like, shocked.
That was like, literally one of those
pit of your stomach, this is a nightmare.
And I said, "I love your daughter.
I wanna spend my life with her
and I want your permission".
He said, "No, that's not what I think is happening here.
I don't even know who you are.
You're a stranger to me.
Why would I... like that's not happening?"
And so I said, "You know, I don't easily give up
and my intention is to marry your daughter".
- My dad did disapprove very strongly of the relationship
but I think it was more a reflection
of him letting go of his daughter than of whom...
it's not anything about Jason, I believe.
And only stepping out of it now that we are engaged,
I do feel like I have that kind of clarity.
And I've mentioned this to Jason in bits and pieces
but there have been, mostly I just think
of one person in particular, who she's like,
"Are you sure you wanna move to LA for this guy?"
I think because I had been so adamant
about defining my identity
as someone who's strong and independent
and to be honest, doesn't need a man. Right?
Like people coming to terms with the fact
that yes, maybe I will move somewhere for a guy.
Especially when I was saying I'm moving to LA
a lot of my friends were happy,
but to be honest because we're long distance,
a lot of people didn't get to know you, right.
And so they had- - Particularly your dad.
- Particularly my dad, but even friends.
- Which I get.
I actually, I understand why even your dad said no.
- Whoa. - At lunch.
I don't know if it was fair, but I understand his
perspective. - Perspective.
- Because I had spent all this time with your mom,
but I didn't get that much time to spend with your dad.
So for him, he's coming back, he's like, "Who is this guy?"
And if I were him, I'd be like,
"No, heck no, you gotta like
come to me." - Win me over. Yeah.
- As a man, and like my only daughter.
And that's why now, having his support
means so much more though, too now.
- Yeah. - Right?
The fact that he's- - It energizes us.
- Excited for us.
And, to be honest, it made us really understand
each other better and our family is better.
(gentle music)
- I think,
giving up my own independence and my own identity
to become a unit with somebody else.
I think now that we are engaged and we're thinking
about actually starting this life together
and both of us want kids,
Jason is really intent on setting rules for our family.
We created our own value system, which is joy,
growth, respect, Christ and communication.
And I think what's scary to me is,
what if I don't live up to those
and that he has a certain idea of how he wants a wife to be.
And what's beautiful is his idea of a wife
is not like domestic or cooking or any of that.
It's more of this wanting to be a very high level partner.
And I just am afraid I'll fall short of that.
- I think that in a lot of ways I'm very much a romantic
and ever since I was young,
could not wait to find my wife,
could not wait to get married.
I think my fear has always been,
what if you choose the wrong person?
What if she's not the person for me?
Or what if I'm supposed to be with someone else?
Or what if there's someone better out there?
What I started to realize was that so much of that fear
was coming out of my selfishness,
of what do I believe that I deserve in a marriage.
And I started to realize,
actually the point of marriage is the opposite,
is who is someone who I can serve and who I can love,
who I can be generous to and gracious to and serve.
And I realized, oh wow, if that's the case,
I don't think I will ever find
anyone better than Mel for me.
To be honest, before we got engaged,
the fear for me was, what if she's not the right person?
Or what if there's another person, a better person for me?
- What do you think I said?
- I don't know, because I feel like early on
I liked you a lot more than you liked me, so.
(Mel laughs)
- I think the thing I'm scared about
is losing my own identity and independence.
Even though I know a lot of the things
you are laying out are positive,
it's still infringing on my freedom.
Yeah. - So being able to...
- Come to the table together.
- Come to the table together where you actually respect me,
and you're not just saying you respect me.
- Well, I was thinking about respect
because that's like one of our values.
We've got values like-
- I've shared it already.
- Okay, it sounds really corny.
- Ready?
- JGR CC.
- Joy. - Joy.
- Growth. - Growth.
- Respect. - Respect.
- Christ. - Christ.
- Communication - Communication.
- I mean, should we do our secret handshake too?
- No. - Okay.
It's a secret.
I love Jason because he is a keeper of my soul
and he really embraces me and all of my imperfections.
And truly, whenever I am going through
a hardship or a difficult time,
there's no one else that I want to share that with
because I know that you will be so strong and so steady
and always there for me and love me unconditionally
in a way that I didn't know was possible.
To be honest, I don't believe in soulmates
but I know he's the closest thing
to a soulmate I'll ever find.
- I love Mel because she's my best friend.
I love her because she teaches me to be joyful.
She challenges me to be more loving.
I love her because I trust her.
Together, we can conquer anything.
- I think the main thing that I under appreciate sometimes,
is how much you do believe in me.
- Wow.
- And you champion me when I feel like
I don't do that for myself,
even though there's fierceness and whatever.
Ultimately, I think I have a lot of self doubt
but you are fearless in some ways.
I hope to do the same to you.
- I think it's because I get so much of my courage from you.
Even what I've built with Jubilee
or my community that I have,
I feel like so much of that is because of you.
And I have no doubt in my mind
that you can literally do anything that you wanted.
You could be president of the United States.
You could start your own company.
You could become Oprah.
You could literally do, honestly, whatever you wanted
and I feel like my only role is to support you
and help you to see that, 'cause once you believe that
you're gonna change the world.
So you know, I'm like a thousand percent behind you.
I love you, Bugs.
- I love you.
- Give me a hug.
- Love you.
- Good job.
- What, were you rating my performance?
- No, I just thought
that you might say something mean about me.
- I mean, I probably did.
(both laugh)
You just weren't listening.
- Yeah.
(gentle music)