Alice was born on a dark and stormy night, filled with ominous omens, in the wilds of Delaware. She grew up in the town of Newark (that's Newark, not Newark), and eventually escaped to the land of sunshine and hippies known as Berkeley, where she attended U.C. Berkeley as an undergrad. After grabbing degrees in Native American Studies and Peace and Conflict Studies, she travelled around the US and Canada for a bit, and eventually ended up back in Berkeley, at which point she met Steve (on another dark and stormy night filled with ominous portents). After that, she finished her first year at NYU law school before deciding to move back to the land of hippies. Completing her first year of law school taught her many things, one of which was that she most definitely didn't want to be a lawyer. She's currently working in program administration at the East Bay Community Recovery Project.
Steve was born on a dark night, not filled with portents, but instead with monkeys, in the heights of northern Texas. He grew some in the towns of Wichita Falls (TX) and Oklahoma City, before eventually moving to Houston, where he lived for quite some time. During those long, humid years, he attended Rice University (in Houston), allegedly got degrees in Chemistry and Biochemistry and finally escaped to the land of sunshine and hippies when he started grad school at the U.C. Berkeley Chemistry Department, where he sees lots of hippies but very little sunshine. It was during his 3rd year (oh, there's been so many of them!) of grad school in physical chemistry when he met Alice. Since then, he's just been staying in grad school, doing the usual grad student thing of drinking espresso, never seeing the sunlight, and being inexplicably bruised and cut on an almost continuous basis.
Steve and Alice both attended the (first annual) Anti-Valentine's Day Party, hosted by Laura and Nandini of Cottage B in 2002. Alice and Laura had been roomates at Cottage B back in the day, and Steve had met Laura and Nandini through a complicated series of people and events that included Sunil, Sumana, stand up comedy and, through a strange twist of fate, the hamburglar. It took two more Cottage B functions to get things started, but after that it was just seven quick months before Alice proposed, Steve counter-proposed, and the stage was set for this event.