it was an old , rowdy dive that played host to the chance encounter between two souls born and raised worlds apart. To be clear, no plans for dancing had been made by either of them. It was a Thursday, after all. For Lindsey, a day of sifting through the contents of an estate sale with her friend, Emily, seemed to be ending with an afternoon margarita in Schaumburg. But, as they often do, these margaritas put them in the mood to dance. Back in the city, David’s friend, Paul, had arrived for a visit a few days earlier. A former Marine and present-day thrill-seeker, Paul was ready to mutiny for lack of Chicago sight-seeing and demanded, at minimum, a trip to a local public house. So it was that a couple of margaritas and a mutinous friend brought David and Lindsey together in a place that, from that day forward, would belong to them: Damen Tavern.

The mix of patronage, from blue-collar Chicagoans to yuppies and hipsters seeking a local thrill, meant that the jukebox played a truly bizarre series of songs organized only by the highest bidder. Bad Bunny preceded Johnny Cash, Whitney Houston followed by Mac Miller, and Pitbull featured at least twice throughout.

It was David that noticed Lindsey first. The lady in red, her hair burnished by the neon light, moving across the bar with the rhythm of whatever song chortled from the jukebox. There was something about her the made her simultaneously captivating and unapproachable. She was beautiful, yes - and striking - but there was something else. Something otherworldly and with the gravitational pull of destiny. She was out of his league. Yet, it was as David stood to leave that Lindsey suddenly appeared before him. “Dance with me.” she said. “Get another round!” David barked to Paul, but it was as he took her hands in his for the first time that a really funny thing happened.

David had requested a song nearly an hour before - a Sturgill Simpson song brimming with the languid twang of steel guitar and punctuated by the hoot and holler of a full horns section - slow - but powerful. He never thought he’d hear it, buried deep in the lineup, and that was just fine by him as he had picked it only to troll the bar. Yet now, in this moment, just as he held the future love of his life for the first time, the song played. “Oh,” Lindsey said, looking down, “We don’t have to dance to this song. It’s kind of slow.” “No, no,” David protested. “We have to dance to this song. I chose it.”

And that is the story of how David and Lindsey shared their first moments together. Two years later, he would kneel just outside the tavern’s door and ask her to spend the rest of her life with him. And she said yes.