For the past five years, Alex and Christina have been running a bookstore that is both their primary income as a couple and their passion.

They opened a novel idea bookshop in Philly a year before the pandemic hit and when the city closed all of its doors

They had to completely rethink everything about their small business

They had no one to lean on but one another for better or

worse. This is a story about perseverance and pivoting, about love and about how the

how the things that should break us often bring us closer together

and make our bonds stronger.

But it's also a story about falling in love with a dream and an idea

and hoping every single day that that dream can be sustainable. Owning and operating a small business is harder than ever these days and it is not for the faint of heart. I am a person who loves books and independent bookstores and I also live about a mile away from a novel idea in Philly.

So this one and this love story really hits close to home. So we actually met on Tinder back in 2015 and I was very new to the app and Alex is the only person I actually went on a date with from

Tinder so we are a T a tender success story.

Yeah, and I had only gone on one other date.

So it was pretty pretty quickly.

We found each other.

It's funny because the podcast has been around since 2015, which means we have a lot of couples that have met on tender,

but of the tender couples that we've had on the show clearly they're people who have gotten

married the majority of them will say oh it was this was like my first tender match which is very

funny yeah we, we're thankful for Tinder.

There was a distinct rule that I was told that was X amount of dating before proposing.

I didn't entirely follow that.

I was a little early, but it was about

year and I

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