It All Started With a Friendly Invitation...
In September 2025, Maddie had been living in Austin for exactly five weeks. Still settling into a new city, she got a text from her friend Spencer (who she met while working together in Charlotte) asking if she wanted to join him and some friends while he was in town for the weekend.
He casually mentioned that he was out with "a few of his buddy's friends" at Little Woodrow's.
Turns out... "a few" meant exactly one.
Enter Bryce…
When Maddie arrived, it was just Spencer and his longtime friend Bryce, who Spencer had met years earlier while working together at EMC.
Maddie's first thought was that he was really cute and tall. (A major bonus in the Izard family.)
Bryce seemed to feel the same.
The three of them spent the evening hopping around Austin, but Bryce and Maddie were both secretly and unknowingly trying to figure out how to get a little one-on-one conversation without making it obvious.
Later that night at Buford's (a very classy establishment 😉), Bryce finally made his move and asked Maddie out to dinner the following Wednesday.
She said yes.
The First Date
Their first date was at Uchibā, where dinner somehow turned into hours of conversation.
They discovered they had a lot in common: a love of cooking, wandering grocery stores, traveling whenever possible, and being surrounded by amazing family and friends.
They also quickly learned they shared a mutual dislike of waiting in lines and slow walkers.
As if the date wasn't memorable enough, Bryce came back to find his car had been towed. Instead of letting it ruin the night, he laughed it off and rolled with it. Looking back, Maddie now realizes that's probably the clearest sign of just how much he liked her—because under normal circumstances, that reaction might have looked VERY different.
Life Together
Since that September weekend, they've been mostly inseparable—and, honestly, rarely in Austin.
Whenever they have the chance, they're planning their next adventure together. Over the past year and a half, they've made memories in Bainbridge Island and Seattle, Cabo San Lucas, Dallas (where they unfortunately watched Texas fall short in the National Championship), Tokyo, Kyoto, Jackson Hole (more than once), Charlotte, Cape Cod, Nantucket, London, Charleston, Las Vegas, back to Japan with friends, and Singapore.
And, fittingly, one last trip back to Jackson Hole became the place where Bryce asked Maddie to spend forever together.
One Very Important Member of the Family
Of course, no chapter of our story would be complete without Snax.
What started as Maddie's dog has become their dog. Snax has officially accepted Bryce as both his dad and his preferred wrestling partner.
