Julia Kate Tiller and Eric Daniel Graves didn’t meet at her older brother’s graduation in 2019, although they both attended (Mr. Graves is Ms. Tiller’s brother’s friend). They didn’t fall in love at church in the summer of 2021, although that’s where they met.

The two became fast friends thanks to social media. “He used Facebook Messenger to slide into my DMs,” Ms. Tiller said. Around that same time, Ms. Tiller had moved to Austin in June, just after graduating college, and began fostering cats. Her first was Atlas, a two-year-old ringworm-infected cat.

In early October 2021, Ms. Tiller and Mr. Graves would go out with groups of friends. But that changed at the end of the month. On Halloween night, a week after a pumpkin carving party at Mr. Graves home, he and Ms. Tiller walked around watching the trick-or-treaters, just the two of them, making it “one of our first times hanging out alone,” Ms. Tiller said.

“We both started talking about deeper ideas, like our goals in life and what we want to accomplish,” Ms. Tiller said. “We found we had very similar outlooks and values.”

In November, the two began taking walks together and grabbing coffee during the day as they both worked from home. “We were just getting to know each other one-on-one,” Ms. Tiller said. “We didn’t really have a first date.”

By Nov. 18, the two were a couple. “Eric invited me over to watch James Bond’s ‘Casino Royale’ since I had never seen it,” Ms. Tiller said. “Afterward, he told me he liked me and wanted to date. I said I’d like that.”