Winterfell and garbage cookies: the start to every great love story. It was Sam's early baking days, and a group of Cody and Sam's friends would come together each weekend to watch the latest episode of Game of Thrones. Cody liked that Sam put M&Ms in cookies. Sam liked that Cody liked anything of his at all.

Months earlier, Cody and Sam first met at a welcome back to D.C. happy hour for Kate Jaffee (then Kate Henjum! Credit to Mary Bowman for organizing the shindig). Cody thought Sam was the funny, tall guy with good-looking socks, and Sam thought Cody was the pretty, easy to talk to, smart, Inglorious Basterds fan. The spark was lit—they just didn't yet know it.

Fast forward: the penultimate season of Game of Thrones is ending, and each individual at the watch party had decided that Cody and Sam needed to date.

With the show's next and final season more than a year away, the friends weekly gathering—and excuse for Cody and Sam to see one another—was coming to a close. As they like to retell the tale to friends and family alike: Sam had to (ahem) or get off the pot. And so he (ahem)'d.

The next few days were a blur: there was a Fourth of July party named after a mouse wherein Sam and groomsman Bill Jaffee absolutely ransacked the competition in a beer pong tournament. Their final opponents? Cody and bridesmaid Mary Bowman. Sam's unrelenting competitiveness sealed the deal for Cody. For Sam the feeling was the same. While it was Sam and Bill who won the tournament, it was ultimately Cody and Sam who won something MUCH more.

Things took off from there. Well, Kate Jaffee texted Cody on Sam's behalf to ask her out, and then she replied to Sam on Cody's behalf to accept. Unbeknownst to Cody and Sam, Kate Jaffee had just asked herself out and thankfully accepted the invitation. The rest, as they say, is history.

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