In 2010, Alexis DeBoer met a cute boy at a party. But for the most part, the story ends there, or at least pauses. She added him on Facebook, they lived in different states, and they had one conversation that lasted about two minutes over Facebook Messenger. They didn’t message each other again… until 2016.
Six years after Alexis’ chance meeting with Dimitry Ediss through mutual friends, she was working as a nurse in Reno, having moved back from California. She was pretty new to the job when an elderly woman with Alzheimer’s came into the ER. One by one, a string of family members flooded into the room.
Alexis ended up spending several hours with them while she cared for the family matriarch. By the time everyone was ready to leave, they had all silently agreed on one thing: Alexis would be the perfect fit for their son/brother. The daughter of Alexis’ patient slipped a piece of paper into Alexis’ hand as she left, instructing Alexis to call her son. The name on the paper, Dimitry Ediss, looked familiar.
A quick Facebook search confirmed what Alexis had suspected—Dimitry was the cute boy she had a crush on back in 2010. She didn’t have the nerve to text him, so she tossed the paper and moved on. Simultaneously, at a college in Southern California, Dimitry was decidedly unamused as his family sent him covert photos of the “cute nurse” treating their grandmother and suggested she was totally “his type.”
After a month or so passed, Alexis decided to, with some liquid courage after a Reno Wine Walk, reach out to Dimitry on Facebook in December 2016. She told him the story of his family handing her his number. He had no idea she was the same person he’d once met at an undergrad party until he scrolled up to their brief 2010 conversation. Dimitry gave his number to Alexis himself this time and the two began texting.
“Since Dimitry was coming home for the holidays and I had no plans on Christmas Eve he invited me over that evening to hang out with his mother and him,” Alexis recalls. “He mentioned it was fitting as she hooked us up.”
That proposed first date was a missed connection. Alexis had to run last minute to Utah to be by her grandfather’s side while he had emergency brain surgery (sidenote—her grandfather survived).
“She had some excuse that she had to bail because her grandpa was in the hospital and she wouldn’t make it. Some excuse, eh? Well, turns out that he really had a stroke, and she was really in the hospital with him,” Dimitry says.
“With him recovering, I needed to get back to Nevada for work. Dimitry and I made new plans to meet for dinner once I returned,” shares Alexis. “I remember walking in [to Imperial] and noticing him immediately in this black peacoat. All the butterflies were felt in this moment.”
Afterward, they went ice skating. According to Dimitry, Alexis hasn’t stopped talking since that day.
The two continued their courtship through schooling and living in different states. “Dimitry returned to Southern California to finish school for about a year. Long distance was rough, but I went down as often as I could,” Alexis says.
In Fall 2017, they reunited in Reno, where they were engaged in 2020 while camping over Alexis’ birthday weekend, a last minute change of plans partially related to the pandemic.
“I said some smooth cool-cat things, got on one knee, then got hit a bunch. Alexis told me to shut up, cried for about a minute while constantly hugging then hitting me. That was her yes.”
In July, one month after the engagement, the couple bought their first home in South Reno and are currently planning a wedding, likely in an outdoorsy location. Her ring is a third-generation Ediss ring, worn by Dimitry’s grandmother and his mother, a fitting heirloom for the couple who may have never gotten together if it weren’t for Dimitry’s family. “It’s very vintage and I couldn’t love it anymore,” Alexis says.
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