We Made It to the Voting Round!

We Made It to the Voting Round!

🌼 Date: Monday, June 22, 2026

⚡ Energy: Surprised, excited, and a little giggly

💖 Status: Casey and I made it to the voting round

🥰 Outlook: High school sweethearts still giving each other butterflies

Today I opened my email and found out that Casey and I made it to the voting round of America’s Favorite Couple.

What?

Excuse me?

Us?

Apparently yes.

Casey and Tina have officially entered the chat.

The competition is sponsored by Colossal, Oceana, and Regional Food Bank. The winning couple will get to share their love story in a Variety Magazine advertorial, take home $20,000, and enjoy an unforgettable dinner date in the Hollywood Hills with Jeff and Emilie Goldblum.

I mean, no pressure.

Just a normal little couples contest with Variety Magazine, Hollywood Hills, and Jeff Goldblum casually waiting in the background.

Cool, cool, cool.

Our bio says:

Casey and Tina: High school sweethearts who built a life, survived the unimaginable, and still give each other butterflies.

And honestly?

That pretty much says it all.

The contest has sent us additional questions to answer along the way, and somehow, with a little help from memories, tears, laughter, and a whole lot of “how do we say this without writing a whole novel?” we have passed each round so far.

The first question was:

How did your love story begin?

Our love story began in high school band class.

Casey says I walked in wearing my gray rabbit fur coat, laughing with my best friend, and he saw a halo of light like angels were singing.

I played flute.

He played sax.

And he found his “in” by helping my friend with music.

Smooth, right?

Later, he somehow always drove by my bus stop just in time to offer me a ride.

I would ask, “Are you going my way?”

Turns out, he was.

For life.

The second question was:

What is your favorite memory you’ve shared as a couple?

One of our favorite memories is our first date.

We went to Pizza Hut, then roller skating, because skating had been our Friday-night tradition in middle school and early high school.

It was simple, sweet, and perfectly us.

Two kids who already knew how to make each other laugh, suddenly realizing there was something more.

That night still feels like the moment our friendship found its heartbeat.

The third question asked what we would do with the $20,000.

This year, December 21, 2026 will be our 35th anniversary, and we would use the money to take the European trip we have dreamed about for years.

Italy and Paris have always been on our bucket list.

The romance.

The history.

The food.

The art.

The magic of it all.

After 35 years of love, life, laughter, loss, raising kids, surviving heartbreak, walking through cancer, and still choosing each other every day, making new memories under the Eiffel Tower would be a dream come true.

The fourth question was:

The Moment Your Heart Knew

And honestly, I do not think there was one single moment I knew Casey was the one.

It was a thousand little moments that all pointed back to him.

We were friends first, and that friendship became the foundation for everything.

Marrying my best friend is the best decision I ever made.

Marriage is hard.

It takes work.

It takes patience.

It takes forgiveness.

It takes humor.

It takes choosing each other on the easy days and the brutal ones.

But friendship gives you something solid to fall back on.

And thirty-five years later, after everything life has thrown at us, he still gives me butterflies.

That is the part that gets me.

We are not some shiny, perfect couple with a fairy tale life.

We are real.

We have been through beautiful moments and devastating ones.

We have raised a family.

We have buried a son.

We have walked through cancer.

We have laughed when life was ridiculous and cried when life was unbearable.

We have had good years, hard years, messy years, and years that changed us forever.

And somehow, here we are.

Still holding hands.

Still making each other laugh.

Still choosing each other.

Still us.

Voting opens on July 6, so I will share more details when it is time.

For now, I am just excited that we made it this far, and I am grateful for every single person who has loved us, supported us, prayed for us, cheered us on, and followed our story.

I never expected our little high school love story to end up in a contest like this.

But then again, I also never expected half the things life has thrown at us.

At this point, I have learned to just hold Casey’s hand and keep going.

Sometimes life gives you cancer.

Sometimes life gives you heartbreak.

Sometimes life gives you plot twists nobody asked for.

And sometimes?

Sometimes it gives you a chance to tell the world that after all these years, your high school sweetheart still makes your heart flutter.

I will take that one.

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Want to follow the journey from the beginning?
Visit Tiny Tina – Status: Alive (Daily Check-Ins) to see the full timeline of posts.

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💗 Tina –
One Badass Day at a Time