Local couple finds happiness together

Savannah Ellis and Justin St. Germain have been dating for eight years and this August that long-term relationship will turn to marriage.

Ellis and St. Germain will be getting married on Aug. 7 but that wedding comes after nearly a decade of being together. Ellis said that the two had talked while in high school – Ellis at New Brockton and St. Germain at Enterprise High – but the relationship didn’t come to fruition until years later.

“We were going to date in high school but he ended up dating another girl and it kind of broke my heart back then,” Ellis remembers.

Ellis said that years later they reconnected and after their first real date she felt something special there.

“When we went on our first actual date something just kind of clicked between us,” Ellis said. “On the first real date things just sort of clicked and I knew we were meant to be together.”

St. Germain and Ellis were together through college as St. Germain attended Enterprise State Community College and Ellis attended nursing school at Lurleen B. Wallace Community College. It was in college where St. Germain said he really knew Ellis was the one for him.

“I realized that she was the one while I was in my last semester of paramedic school,” St. Germain said. “I spent several weeks where I would go to school then to work and put in clinical rotations and not be able to make it home. She stayed with me through that all.”

While Ellis said she probably would have married him if St. Germain had asked her after he first asked her to be his girlfriend, she also realized that their long relationship probably benefited the couple as well.

“After I got my nursing license my health started to decline really bad,” Ellis said. “He stuck by me through all of that no matter what and he worries about me all the time. He’s just always been by my side.

“I feel like us going through everything – with marriage being through sickness and health – seeing that before we even got married was good for us and it was a test for us.”

When St. Germain decided he wanted to pop the question he was inspired by a Tik-Tok video. St. Germain attached a note that read, “Will you marry my dad?” to the couple’s dog.

“I thought it would be fun for me to place the bandana on the (dog) and wait until she finally noticed it,” St. Germain said. “And when she did notice it on him it gave me a good laugh.”

Ellis said that the dog ran around the house for hours before she finally saw it.

“The dog walked around the house for like two or three hours and I never noticed because it blended in with his collar,” she said. “Whenever I finally saw it I was about to let him outside to go to the bathroom and I said, ‘What?!’ and I ran into where he was sitting and he said, ‘Did you finally see it?’

“It was really sweet and we changed the bandana out to one that said, ‘She said yes’ and took pictures.”