By Nora Factchecker
Writing an exposé is a labor of love—a way for me to uncover the story beneath the story and tell a unique truth to my readers. At their best, exposés take familiar topics and peel back the layers, revealing the beauty in small details and the intimate meanings hidden behind headline events.
I see potential to do both here, which is why I'm thrilled to have been chosen to write this four-part series on the story behind Macy and Joey's upcoming wedding.
In my drafts, I've been calling this piece "The Wedding of the Century: Macy and Joey, a Love Story for the Ages."
"Please stop calling it the 'wedding of the century' or whatever. We just want to tell people how we met and share some fun facts about us leading up to our engagement—keep it simple," Macy says, taking an indignant sip of her drink in a crowded, hip coffee shop located in their Northwest Denver neighborhood, about two blocks from their home.
My editor sadly agrees with Macy, and we're currently looking for a more succinct and less grandiose title for this collective work (suggestions welcome).
However, I feel that when you’re commissioned by a big-time publication like joeyandmacy.com to cover a couple’s love story—and trusted to guide you, the reader, through the winding and intricate journey that leads from how Macy met Joey to when Joey proposed to Macy—you can’t help but treat the whole affair as if you’re covering the wedding of the century.
After all, who’s to say?
I might just be doing exactly that.
So, with as little pomp and circumstance as I can muster, let’s dive in.
Part One: The Meet Cute
Their story starts, of course—as all good stories do—on Halloween.
Ohh, and it starts in the desert.
The weekend that brought these two hurtling into each other's orbit was off to a bit of a rough start.
Macy and her friends had made a last-minute decision to caravan west to attend a Halloween party in Moab, Utah—a small desert town famous for its National Parks (Arches and Canyonlands) and world-class hiking, biking, climbing, and camping.
As with any spontaneous group adventure, the logistics were daunting. For this trip, they had to coordinate work schedules, scrounge up costumes, check camping gear, and pack hiking equipment.
Through some minor miracle, they managed to get on the road—though fashionably late was an inevitable outcome. “So we're 100% going to get to this party late because we had to wait until everyone was off work and everything, and Moab is a five-hour drive from Denver,” Macy recalls as I contemplate my empty coffee cup, hoping the shop has free refills for drip brews (they do, thankfully).
“When we got there, it was dark, and there were like a hundred people running around this campsite dressed in all kinds of costumes. I still, to this day, do not know who the heck was hosting that party. All I know is that his name was either Jason or Maxwell or something. We simply called him ‘Gatsby’ because he had orchestrated this big party which had just appeared out of the night, and it seemed like none of the ten of us who went—other than our buddy Sean, who knew him from work—had ever met or even seen the guy.
“I still couldn’t pick him out of a lineup, but he throws a great party.”
What she didn’t know—couldn’t have known—was that in that confused mess of a Halloween party, someone special was waiting for her.
I interviewed the couple separately for this piece in order to get each of their unfettered perspectives. When I sat down with Joey, it was on a quiet Tuesday evening at their local brewery.
“So, I was tagging along to this Halloween party in Moab because a buddy of mine, Jason Maxwell, had offered to lead a rappelling adventure for a few of us who played softball together. None of us had ever gone before, and we were all interested in trying the sport,” Joey says, taking a sip of a beer called Sit’N Rock Ale, perched halfway on and half off the stool at our rectangular high-top table—as if weighing whether to pace during his retelling.
“Rappelling is this great sport where you hike up a mountain and then find the most vertical way of getting back down using rock climbing equipment for belaying. Totally awesome.”
Joey, taking a moment to sip his beer and pet a dog wandering too close to the table, continues “I had no idea that the party was going to have so many people attending or that vertical cliff faces weren’t the only thing I was going to be falling for, if you know what I’m saying… That’s a rappelling joke about falling in love with Macy, by the way—please make sure your readers know I was going for a joke there."
Bad mountaineering jokes aside, I believe him when he says he had no idea he’d be meeting someone important—I mean, in what world would a rational individual decide to dress in a purple Care Bear onesie to meet their future spouse for the first time? And then brag about it later to a stranger?
“Look, the onesie was an awesome Halloween costume, but it didn’t have any external pockets, and it gets super cold in the desert at night that time of year. So, I used a pocket knife to open the seams on both sides of the outfit so I could access my pant and coat pockets underneath. Ingenious, right?”
This exchange is emblematic of why my coffee date with Macy was the more enjoyable of the two interviews.
But I digress.
“That night was beautiful—clear, and cold, and dry,” Joey continues. “Not a cloud in the sky, and we were at this big campsite Maxwell had reserved next to a bend in the Colorado River. There’s hardly any light pollution out there, and the moon hadn’t risen, so you could really see all of the stars in the sky incredibly clearly.”
Macy remembers her first impression of Joey vividly: “I just remember this guy dressed as the Purple Care Bear holding a beer, coming out of the mess of the party to enthusiastically yell at our mutual friend Sean about the stars reflecting on the water or something. He wanted everyone to come with him to look at it down at the river.”
“I don’t know if it was his enthusiasm or if I was just having a good time at the party, but yeah, something made me think I might want to see more of that guy… It wasn’t the costume, pockets or no pockets, I can tell you that much.”
And there, on the banks of a slow-moving bend in the Colorado River, is where this story pauses, my dear reader. It will continue with the publication of the second chapter of four, set to be released early April.
Rest assured, there are plenty more twists and turns to come in this compelling and intricate love story.
For now, I’ll leave you with this:
“Joey and I actually started hosting our own annual Halloween party in Moab about four years ago,” says Macy.
“We didn’t start it as a way to commemorate how we met, but I think there was a general agreement that Halloweens spent camping in the desert, wearing funny costumes is about as good as it gets—and that special things can happen out there.
“Anyway, it’s always a highlight of the year, and we’ve had a lot of fun continuing this tradition and sharing it with friends,” finishes Macy.
When I ask Joey about the tradition, he adds, “[Yeah], we’ve been really lucky to have a ton of our favorite people come out to experience that weekend with us over the past four years. Friends have traveled from all over the country to be there for the party.
“It’s really special to us for that reason, and because, at its heart, it feels like an annual celebration of us meeting—at least, it does to me.”
Note from the editor: We apologize for the overeager tone and verbose language of the writer, Nora Factchecker. All our other correspondents were engaged on other projects so you're stuck with her.
Part Two: Now Live (Fashionably Late)
Originally scheduled for March 1, 2025, Part Two was, in true Nora fashion, released a month late on April 1—but we promise it was worth the wait.
You can now read Part Two here, featuring “Coffee Saves the Day” and “Meeting Timmy.”
We’ll continue posting chapters as they’re completed, and once the full series is wrapped, you’ll be able to read the entire story in one place right here.
Also, make sure to keep an eye out at the wedding for a limited print release of the complete work.
Stay tuned—and thank you for your patience.
—Nora (and the editorial team at joeyandmacy.com)