Dating app leads to life together

Six years ago, Andrexia “Jojo” McBride and Christion Gregory swiped right on each other and on Oct. 17 the two will marry.

After being convinced to download the Tinder app by friends, the two found each other while attending rival schools: Troy University and University of South Alabama. The couple admitted that they were not forthcoming with their meeting place at the beginning of the relationship.

“We told people for the longest that we met at a basketball game,” McBride said. “My mom would have my head if she knew I met someone on the internet.”

McBride is daughter of Kimberly McBride and Kiti Fowlkes. Gregory is the son of Stephanie Gregory and Christos Osborne.

The two met after about a week of talking on the app.

“I was surprised that I didn’t creep her out because I was like, ‘I need to meet you now,’” Gregory said.

And while McBride admitted she was creeped out at first, the two had their first date at Sante Fe in Enterprise.

“I asked her to be my girlfriend at that first date,” Gregory said. “It was on sight.”

He said the fact they’re getting married is funny because he used to joke with McBride on Tinder that he’d make her his wife since so many of their interests aligned.

“I asked her what her interests were and she’s like, ‘By the way I play video games and stuff,’” Gregory said. “I was like, ‘Oh, you might be my wife.’ I was joking and stuff but I was kind of serious, if that makes any sense.”

Gregory actually ended up transferring out of USA’s engineering program to Troy’s information systems program. He moved in with McBride and said that he grew to love her even more as she supported him through the move and getting adjusted to Troy.

“I was living with her at her apartment and I didn’t have a job for like—I think—a year and a half,” Gregory said. “She was very motivational and didn’t treat me like a bum. She didn’t leave because I didn’t have money so I realized that she loved me for me. She’s been a great support system for me.”

McBride said he had also supported her through multiple tribulations in her life including the death of her brother.

“We had been dating at that point for a year and my brother passed away,” McBride said. “He was like on the spot, right there, didn’t leave, didn’t move through the entire thing. I think that was my first, ‘Oh, he might be the one’ type of deal.”

She said he didn’t leave her side for almost two weeks. She also said that he’s supported her through her kidney and pancreas transplants.

“When I would be dealing with a medical report or the first transplant surgery, I was like ‘This is crazy,’” McBride said. “I’m so nervous leading up to it and just having him there to be like, ‘Everything’s fine. Everything’s going to be okay.’ And he would come visit me and not even bringing me stuff, just coming to hang out. It was a big thing for me because I was like, ‘I just need to see people.’”

McBride said she’s going to have to have another kidney transplant but that she knows Gregory will be beside her the entire time.

She talked about how she had a flare up of Chronic Inflammatory Demyelinating Polyneuropathy, which caused inflammation of the nerves in her legs right before her graduation.

“My legs had pretty much just stopped working,” McBride said. “I couldn’t get out of bed and he would just do whatever I needed (him) to do, carry me to the bathroom or to the kitchen or whatever. It was a scary time for me because I didn’t know what was wrong with me initially and just having him there to be like, ‘I can do whatever needs to be done.’”

One of the biggest, “hiccups” of the relationship was a date that went wrong between the couple in the beginning stages of their relationship. The couple had gotten into an argument and McBride fell asleep.

“I was like, ‘Okay, I guess this argument’s over,’” Gregory said.

He said that after taking a trip to Walmart, he told her that he was going to go Sonic for ice cream to no response from McBride.

“I was like, ‘Okay, we’re really doing this,’” Gregory said.

After he got to Sonic and there was still no response from McBride, he called her mom who advised him to rush her to the emergency room.

“I just dropped the phone and hauled to the emergency room,” Gregory said.

McBride had not told Gregory that she was diabetic and she had passed out due to her blood sugar dropping.

McBride said she still remembers waking up after the incident.

“I woke up and I was thinking in my head, ‘Oh, he’s done with me for sure,’” McBride said. “‘I didn’t tell him and he’s probably freaked out—thought I was dead.’”

Gregory said he remembered seeing her after the incident.

“When she regained consciousness and she was looking at me like she was ashamed or whatever, I kind of realized then that I loved her and I wanted to take care of her,” Gregory said.

All of these experiences led up to Oct. 9, 2019, where Gregory finally proposed to McBride on a beach in Fort Walton, Fla.

“We get to the beach, we said a bunch of SpongeBob quotes, it was real good,” McBride said. “So Christion came up to me as he’s saying things like, ‘We’ve been together so long’ and blah blah blah. Then he walks away and in my mind for a flash second, I was like, ‘This could be it.’”

A little while later, Christion returned to show McBride what he found on the beach.

“He’s like, ‘I found this shell,’ and it’s a whole sand dollar,” McBride said. “And I’m like, ‘You found this? On the beach? In this sand?’ You don’t find whole sand dollars on the beach. So I’m like, ‘Let me look at that,’ and I flip it over and it says, ‘Will you marry me?’ on the other side. It completely caught me off guard.”

Gregory said he had planned the trip for about a month and a half, but started getting cold feet when the two went with their group of friends to the beach.

“From the time I let friends know what was going on, it was nerveracking,” Gregory said. “When she said I walked up to her and said, ‘We’ve been together for a while,’ I was going to do it then but I got nervous so I walked away. I was like shaking.

“I had the sand dollar in my pocket the whole time and I think I threw it on the ground at least three or four times before I really did it. I threw it down there and would be like, ‘I’m not ready yet,’ then pick it up and put it back in my pocket. At some point, I finally gathered enough courage and I was like, ‘Let’s do this.’”

Gregory said he chose that day because he just felt “it was time.”

Now, both Troy graduates say they’re excited to get married in October and take their relationship to the next level.

“I’m excited to marry her because she’s my best friend,” Gregory said.

For McBride, she said she’s excited for the years to come with Gregory.

“(I’m excited to) even if we couldn’t naturally have a family, get to a point where we could somehow have some kids,” McBride said. “And spending time with my best friend and traveling as a married couple.”