After a few weeks of chatting online in typical modern dating fashion, our first real-world meeting occurred on Christmas Day in 2016 in a hospital lounge. Stefen was working a 24-hour shift on the labor and delivery unit when Andy brought him a Starbucks beverage. We’ve been head over heels in love and inseparable since that day. Stefen serves as a family medicine physician with a special interest and emphasis on maternity care, LGBTQ health, and addiction medicine. Andy is currently a full-time MBA student in a career transition where he is dedicated to leadership, Human Resources, coaching and team building. Andy’s cheerful, spontaneous, selfless, caring, and humorous demeanor are complemented by Stefen’s passion, loyalty, quick wit, diligence and forward thinking. We love spending time together going on walks, binge-watching TV shows, kayaking, and playing video games. Stefen loves listening to audiobooks while working on home improvement projects, whereas Andy enjoys gardening and improving his home improvement skills. 

Our five-bedroom, ranch-style home has been a passion project for us, having painted various rooms and installed new floors ourselves. We’re located in a family-friendly neighborhood less than a 10-minute walk from the local elementary school and various parks, playgrounds, and walking trails. We have an amazing fenced-in backyard that includes a large deck, garden area, firepit, and hammock with plenty of room for a swing set and/or trampoline in the future. We have three cats and one dog. Wolfie is our newest addition and is a beautiful gray, snuggly & feisty kitten born in June 2023. Goose is a feisty, food-oriented four-year-old orange short hair, and Cleo is a 13-year-old grumpy tabby. Merlin is a nine-year-old border collie mix who just loves to be loved. 

Our chosen family consists of Andy’s family of origin, which hails from the state of Wisconsin and consists of three brothers, the best sister-in-law one could ask for, three nieces, one nephew, his mom and stepdad, his dad and stepmom, and numerous stepsiblings, uncles, aunts, and cousins. Most members of our family live within two hours of our home, and we routinely gather for holidays, dinners, and random weekend events. Stefen has found tremendous love and connection through his acceptance into Andy’s family.  
 
A great number of people in our family have April, May, or June birthdays, and as a result, one of our family traditions is celebrating all the birthdays by gathering in Wisconsin during Memorial Day weekend. During that time, we kayak, hike, play/sing music, and order pizza. Stefen has kept some of his childhood traditions alive, including baking pies at Thanksgiving and sugar cookies at Christmas; he can’t wait for these to become traditions he shares with our children. 

Our goal is to expand our family as we have so much love to give. We started our life together nearly 7 years ago and have always known that expanding our family was going to be a part of our future. Being a gay male couple makes this biologically impossible, but being parents is something we both feel like we were born for. We have both known joy and sorrow, which we believe will enable us to be the best parents we can be. 

- Andy and Stefen

 

This photo was taken in March of 2017 at Universal Studios in Orlando, Florida.  This was our first trip out of state with each other.  We also visited Disney world during this trip.

This photo was taken in September of 2017 in a suite at American Family Insurance Stadium in Milwaukee for a Milwaukee Brewers baseball game.  Stefen was being goofy with our nephew, Donovan, while Andy looks on at the two being odd.  The suite was donated to Andy’s cousin Allie who lost her battle with numerous medical conditions in early March of 2020.

This was was taken at Stefen’s graduation from his residency program for Family Medicine.  There were two full tables of family supporting Stefen on this momentous occasion.

This photo was taken in August of 2018 at our first destination of our European adventure, Iceland.  After a long flight we were ready to begin what we coined our “McVoyage.”

Another photo from August of 2018 as we were ending our tour at the Guinness Brewery and had a good overlook of Ireland’s capitol of Dublin.

Our third destination on our European “McVoyage” brought us to the beautiful Italian Island of Sicily.  Here we are hiking along the city of Palermo.

Our European “McVoyage” took us to many destinations and we spent about half of it within Italy.  Here we are at the top of the volcano, Mount Vesuvius, just outside of Naples in Italy. 

We had to take multiple forms of transportation during our European “McVoyage” that included airplane, ferry, trains, buses and trolleys.  Here we are braving the twisting roads in the mountains of Sorrento, Italy as we stand in a bus holding on.

Here we are in Door County, WI celebrating Thanksgiving in November of 2022 with family.

Here we are celebrating Christmas with our family in December of 2022.