Monday, February 15, 2016

An LDS couple has swiped right to eternal marriage

By Braden Clark
Trent Wilson and Cierra Johnson, both students at Utah Valley University, matched on Tinder just over a year ago, as of yesterday, and now they are engaged.
“I remember last year I was somewhat down on myself, because I didn’t have anyone to share this weekend with,” Wilson said. “I matched with Cierra the day before Valentine’s Day last year, and I remember being so fixated on how beautiful she was in her profile picture.”
“I didn’t really want anything serious at the time,” Johnson said. “I had just broke up with my ex-boyfriend a week before, and my friends somewhat forced me into downloading the app that weekend.”
Johnson mentioned her initial reaction to the app was very negative, because of the men she encountered. She thought that way until she matched with Trent a few days later, and asked him to get ice cream on Valentine’s Day.
“I’ve never been good at first dates, and this was a whole new beast,” he said. “I was still really awkward, because I got home from my LDS mission three months before, and hadn’t really gone on any legit dates until then. The funny thing is, and probably why it worked out between us, but there are two Baskin Robbins in the Provo area and I went to one, and she went to the other. I sat there for 20 minutes or so before I called her to make sure she was still on her way.”
“I laughed it off at first, because this date wasn’t going over so well to start, but once he got there he was just like he acted online,” Johnson said. “It’s somewhat frightening when you meet someone online, because we are taught growing up there are people out there who want to hurt us, so I had my pepper spray ready just in case.”
Later that year in April, during an LDS general conference, young Mormons were instructed to avoid using apps like Tinder. However, this didn’t stop Wilson and Johnson from dating, but in fact they just decided to hide how they met even more.
Wilson and Johnson dated for the next year, and knew one day they wanted to get married, but one thing they wanted to do is tell their parents and friends exactly how they met.
“We lied about it at first,” Wilson said. “We had this whole made up story about how we met at a bowling alley, and how I asked her out to Baskin Robbins that day. It was really hard to actually tell our parents how we met, because Tinder has such a negative tie to it, and we were afraid of what our parents would think.”
“My dad was the one who was cool about it, oddly,” Johnson said. “It took my mom a few more dinners to actually warm up to Trent, but I think she’s on board now.”
Wilson and Johnson, both belonging to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, plan to get married in the St. George temple in the coming months.
“I think Cierra and I are one of the few that Tinder-dating actually worked out,” Wilson said. “Would I suggest others to try it out? I’m not so sure, because it’s so different, but I don’t think I would have met Cierra if I hadn’t tried it out.”

“A lot of my friends tried to date people over Tinder after Trent and I worked out, but none of their Tinder-relationships worked out. It is what it is, and sometimes you just get lucky,” Johnson said. “We joke with our friends and say, ‘We swiped right to eternal marriage’ we may or may not actually use that on our wedding invitations.”

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