MATT STORRS: My first crush was in elementary school.

And this girl, she had long, blonde, curly hair, and she had a purple dinosaur eraser.

(laughter) BRIANA AZIER: And then I look up, and there is this handsome man.

He has a smile that seems to light up the night.

EMILY WALSH: Ten days into dating Danny, he asked me if we should "lock this down."

(laughs) And I laughed in his face, because I thought we already had.

(laughter) THERESA OKOKON: Tonight's theme is "Smitten."

You never know when Cupid's arrow is going to strike, or what the outcome is going to be.

A rocky start could lead to a lifelong love, and an intense infatuation could lead to a quick expiration.

Sometimes you're going to walk away with friendship, and sometimes you're going to walk away after having faced a complete disaster.

Well, tonight's storytellers are bringing their stories of romance, and we're going to have some crying spells, and we might hear a few wedding bells.

♪ ♪ STORRS: My name is Matt Storrs.

I'm originally from Phoenix, Arizona.

I live in New York, New York now, and I am a lawyer by day, but I also do storytelling and stand-up comedy.

What drew you to storytelling?

I think that I started out with stand-up first, and one of the things I kind of butted into was, I need more space to start talking about the weird things that happened to me in my life and the weird decisions I've made.

And so, storytelling kind of allowed for that, and especially, like, trying to write to a theme, and it was much... it felt much more natural.

And what do you think that you get out of having an audience listening to your story?

And is there a relationship that sort of develops over time with the audience?

I think that there is a certain energy and a certain, um, enjoyment that you get from an audience.

OKOKON: Mm-hmm.

When, you know, somebody laughs or somebody has, you know, an emotional response, you can feel it on stage, and you can react to it.

And, like, you know that they may not have experienced the same thing, but they're on the same wavelength as you, and you can... it's a brief moment of empathy.

♪ ♪ I've loved a lot of things in my life, but the thing that I've loved longest and most deeply... are dinosaurs.

(laughter) But I don't want you to think that I haven't loved other things.

I've loved people.

Uh, you know, I've had crushes.

Like, my first crush was in elementary school.

And this girl, she had long, blonde, curly hair, and she had a purple dinosaur eraser.

(laughter) So even though we had never talked, it was going to be true love.

(laughter) So on Valentine's Day one year, I got the most expensive dinosaur valentines I could afford.

They had the perforated edge.

They had dinosaur temporary tattoos in them.

And I set one aside that had my favorite dinosaur on it for her.

My favorite dinosaur is the Dilophosaurus.

If you're not familiar, that's the one in Jurassic Park that has the two crests.

It has the frill, and it spits acid.

(laughter) But the thing is that scientists don't have proof that it actually spat acid or had the frill.

So as a little boy, I learned the two most dangerous words a little boy can learn.

"Well, actually."

(laughter) And on the back of that Dilophosaurus valentine, I wrote, "I like you.

"I noticed that you have a dinosaur eraser.

"And, even though we haven't talked, maybe we could talk at recess today."

And I walked around my class and I passed out valentines to everybody in my class, because you had to.

(laughter) And when I got to her desk, I noticed that she had a lot of handmade valentines.

But I was confident in my Dilophosaurus and our love of dinosaurs.

So I put mine down, and I went back to my seat, and I watched across the room as she opened all of her valentines.

And then I saw her get to mine, open it up, see the temporary tattoo and smile.

And then, she turned it around and read the back of it... and she stood up.

And I got so excited.

I'm like, she's not even going to wait till recess.

(laughter) We're going to get in trouble.

But instead of walking to me, she started walking the opposite direction in the room.

And it was the first time in my life where I could feel somebody actively not making eye contact with me.

Like, she could clearly see me out of the periphery of her vision, but she would not make eye contact.

And she got to the trash can... and she ripped up my valentine... and threw it away.

Absolutely heartbreaking.

And instead of talking to somebody about that or processing it... (laughter) I decided to go back to my first love, dinosaurs.

(laughter) And on the early days of the internet, I decided to do research on dinosaurs.

And I learned that at the time, four states had state dinosaurs.

Just like you have state trees, state flowers, state birds, there are state dinosaur.

And in our day and age, there are 15 states that have state dinosaurs.

Hopefully more soon.

(laughter) But at the time, there were only four states that had state dinosaurs, and all of them were herbivores, plant eaters.

But then I learned that Arizona, where I grew up, was set to designate one of two dinosaurs, as their state dinosaur.

The first one, the Sonorasaurus, a long-necked dinosaur.

An herbivore.

Boring.

(laughter) The second one... a carnivore.

The Dilophosaurus.

(audience murmurs) So, I did everything I could to get the Dilophosaurus to be the state dinosaur of Arizona.

I wrote my state senators.

I had petitions passed around my school.

And then, I did more research, and I learned that the governor of Arizona, Jane Hull, was going to veto that resolution regardless of what dinosaur was approved.

Now, my reading comprehension wasn't very good back then, and I definitely didn't know what a veto was, but I knew it was bad.

(laughter) So I convinced my parents to take me to Kinko's, and I printed out flyers and posters that were the Arizona state flag with "Recall Hull" superimposed... (laughter) ...over the flag.

And my parents, I don't know if they thought it was a misguided civics class or what.

But, I took them to school, and I passed them out.

I put them in the yard.

I put them in every classroom that would let me.

And people thought I was really politically motivated.

They were like, he's going to make an amazing class president someday.

What policies don't you like about Jane Hull?

And I'm like, well...

I think she's taking Arizona in the wrong direction.

(laughter) And then they'd be like, "Yeah, but what specifically?"

I'm like, "Well, dinosaurs."

"Please don't run for class president."

(laughter) But, like any grassroots campaign that doesn't find its footing, eventually I stopped having as much confidence in my pontifications about dinosaurs.

And eventually, I found myself a year later on Valentine's Day.

And I still got dinosaur valentines, but I didn't splurge for the temporary tattoos.

And I passed them out to everybody in my class.

And when I got back to my desk, for the first time in my life, I had a handmade valentine.

A boy in my class had looked up what a Dilophosaurus skull looked like.

He had drawn it by hand and colored it in.

And when I opened it up, it read, "Matt, I really miss "you talking about dinosaurs in class.

"And even though we haven't talked before, "maybe we could talk today at recess, but maybe not about dinosaurs."

(laughter) And I'm very happy to say that I talked to him that day at recess, and that I still talk to him to this day.

Thank you.

(applause) ♪ ♪ WALSH: I am Emily Walsh.

I am from the Boston area originally, but now I live in New York City, and I'm a stand-up comedian and podcaster and scenic artist.

And so you sort of found your way into stand-up comedy.

Can you talk a bit about that journey and what that was like for you?

Yeah.

So, I was working as a scenic artist, and when I was around 30, you know, I was starting to get really bored at work.

I was working on a cop show, and the work was kind of bland.

I was painting a lot of victim apartments and beige walls and listening to a lot of podcasts with comedians, and I just heard over and over and over again, you just have to try, you just have to go to an open mic.

You just have to start.

I said, you know, if I'm going to do this, I should just go do this.

And I've thought about it for years, so I might as well try.

And then, I kept it a secret for four or five months.

And once I had had a few successful shows under my belt, I started telling friends and family about it.

Do you remember your first time on stage?

I do, it was very... uh, I was very anxious.

I was very nervous.

I had done theater as a really young kid, but it had been maybe 20 years since I'd been on stage.

But it was a blur.

I kind of was nervous and I, uh... Somebody gave me the advice to kind of shake my hands out and just kind of go for it.

And it was only a five-minute performance.

So, it was over before I knew it, and it was purely an addiction.

The second I was off stage, I said, when's the next time I can do that again?

♪ ♪ I never had much luck dating when I was younger.

It turns out a good pickup line for a straight woman isn't, "Hey, we have the same shirt!

(laughter) Twinsies."

Honestly, since I was about 14, people always assumed I was gay.

It never bothered me, but I always wanted to know their reasoning.

I don't know if it's because my voice is a little bit deeper or because I think this is a show outfit.

(laughter) Or because I own enough hammers that I have a favorite one.

(laughter) I think it's just something about me.

Honestly, I think people forget that you can like "boy stuff" and also like boy stuff.

(laughter) So since I wasn't getting much attention when I was younger for being myself, I became a kind of character.

I was this tough girl who used tools and wore cowboy boots and flannel shirts, and I didn't care what anybody thought.

It turns out it takes a lot of effort not to care what people think, um...

But I really leaned in.

In college, I had this great habit where I would drink a little too much whiskey and then tell people "hard truths" they didn't ask for.

(laughter) It's cute, right?

(laughter) So, when I met Jake at my first job after college, and he was asking everybody about their tattoos so that he could make fun of them, I thought we were a match made in heaven.

I was 22 and he was 28, so he was a grown-up.

And he also didn't care what people thought about him, even his boss and his parents.

I was a painter and he was a carpenter, and I really loved that we both worked with our hands, and he could really do no wrong in my eyes.

I thought the fact that he had dropped out of college with two semesters left was cool and alternative.

(laughter) We spent almost every weekend together for months, just hanging out at his apartment, ordering food, watching movies and just laughing.

And I thought I was so lucky to have found him, without realizing he was pretty lucky to have found me.

I was a girl who was willing to spend every Saturday night on his couch, and every Sunday morning just hanging out.

In a year and a half, we didn't go to a single brunch.

(laughter) He never wanted to define our relationship, but I just let that be another reason he was outside the mainstream.

And sure, he left his phone in a drawer so I wouldn't hear from him for days, but I thought that was just cool and different, you know?

And, uh, he didn't have much furniture, but that just meant he wasn't materialistic.

(laughter) It's amazing how far a "You guys just don't understand, he's different" will get you when you're defending a man in your 20s.

(laughter) I had a goal to be the least-annoying girlfriend ever.

I was terrified to lose him.

It felt so amazing when I was in his spotlight that I forgave him for all the times he left me in the dark.

And I thought that it had taken me 22 years to find somebody that I could connect with, it would probably take another 22 if we broke up.

About a year and a half into our relationship, he ghosted me.

But he would still call me occasionally or send a random text.

So I guess it was more of a haunting than a ghosting.

(laughter) And I could tell that he really wanted me to be the one to end the relationship so he didn't have to be the bad guy.

But I'm embarrassed to say it took me months to do that.

We finally broke up, and I just wondered where I would ever find anybody else.

And three years later, he called me out of the blue.

I literally stopped in my tracks I was so shocked to hear his voice.

And he just started talking like nothing had happened.

But I didn't care, because I had been holding a candle for him the entire time.

And not a small candle either, one of those big TJ Maxx candles.

It's not like I had been doing very well without him.

The guy I dated before he called had broken up with me in the Words with Friends app.

(laughter) This is true.

We dated... We dated for nine months.

I had met his dad, and for some reason, when he wanted to break up, he messaged me in fake Scrabble and just said, "Emily, I think this is over."

I didn't even understand.

I responded, "But I have 13 letters left.

(laughter) I was 27, I was living in New York City, I had a constant rotation of roommates.

I was still freelancing, and I had just gone on a tour to maybe study furniture design in grad school, even though I had never designed any furniture.

If that doesn't say lost, I don't know what does.

So, we started talking.

We talked for a few weeks, and we just kept wondering out loud, why did we ever break up?

Even though we had a great list of reasons why.

We decided I should go visit him and we should see if we could get back together.

So I went and visited him, and we went to dinner, and we were both clearly nervous, but he was my soulmate.

We just needed to relax and see where the night went.

And on the way home, we got in a car accident.

It wasn't a big accident, just a fender bender.

The person, you know, in front of us stopped short, and we hit them.

And I hit my head on the dashboard.

It wasn't a hard hit, but it was a shock.

But the bigger shock was watching Jake get out of car to yell at the other driver without checking on me.

And in the minute or two I watched him scream at that stranger, I had one of the clearest thoughts I've ever had in my life.

You will never be his priority.

When we got back to his apartment, I didn't bother telling him I was mad at him.

It seemed pointless.

I sat up in bed that night, and I mourned the end of a relationship I was technically still in.

It had taken five years, but I was finally ready to move on.

A couple years after that, I was in Las Vegas, and I saw a project that he had worked on while we were dating.

I was in a good mood, I was feeling nostalgic, and I called him.

And he answered and said, "Who's this?"

(audience murmurs) We talked for a few minutes, but that was finally it.

I started dating my husband, Danny, a few months after that.

He was this guy I had worked with, and to be honest, he wasn't really on my radar.

But I went to a bar with some friends, and when we walked in, Danny was there and his face lit up when he saw me, because we had stumbled into his birthday party.

(laughter) I found out years later he spent the entire night telling people, "Emily Walsh came to my party," which I'm sure they loved.

But... (laughter) I struggled so much with Jake because I felt like he never actually chose me.

And I figured that no one else ever would.

But ten days into dating Danny, he asked me if we should "lock this down."

(laughs) And I laughed in his face because I thought we already had.

(laughter) Danny has woken up every day for the past ten years and chosen me.

And most days, I believe him.

(audience murmurs) Thank you.

(cheers and applause) ♪ ♪ AZIER: My name is Briana Azier and I was born and raised in a town called Maynard, Massachusetts.

And for the past 20 years, I have lived in Worcester County.

And I am the owner, president, and head treat maker of Bri's Sweet Treats.

What inspired you to begin your journey with Bri's Sweet Treats?

Bri's Sweet Treats is a business that has been born and raised out of the ashes of the pandemic.

My son and I, we were just not happy with sadness.

So we decided that we wanted to change things and we jumped online, and with zero culinary experience at all, we started learning how to make treat boxes.

And we passed them out to friends and family and neighbors, uh, for free.

And we got the response that we were looking for, which was happiness.

But we got a very unexpected response, which was everyone asking us how they could buy our treats.

And I understand that some of the values of, like, um, being homemade and being community centered and, um, family run are all really central to your company.

Can you talk about how those principles sort of manifest in the work you do?

We are literally a business that was born out of giving, and that is a legacy that we really hold true to.

And being a part of the community is very important.

We do actually give a portion of our profits every single month to local nonprofits and community organizations in the Worcester County area that are in line with our values.

♪ ♪ It was a Friday night, about a week before my 29th birthday, and I had just gotten out of ten years of accumulatively bad relationships.

I mean, really bad.

Liars, cheaters, abusers, lives with their moms, lives with their ex, and some more abusers.

But I had learned to love myself and I found stress relief in the gym.

So I also had the best body of my whole life.

So, I'm getting ready for a first date.

I had recently met a man named Matt.

He was really nice.

He made me laugh.

Um, he was tall.

I'm six feet tall.

And he passed my conversation test.

And the conversation test was just a casual way of me having a conversation with a guy that I was interested in.

But it was really airing you out to see if you were marriage material or if there were, like, big red flags.

So, I had just gotten ready.

I had slipped on this tube top dress.

No SPANX, 'cause I worked it out in the gym.

(laughter) And I got a call from my friend Tierney, and she says, "Hey, it's Mike's birthday.

Why don't you come down to the bar and have a drink with us?

And I say, "I'm all dressed up.

I've got a date to get to.

I can't come."

She says, "Bri, when have you ever been tired of being the prettiest girl in the bar?"

So 20 minutes later, I'm pulling up to that bar, and the music is on, and I am dancing.

And I get out of my car, and I hear, "You're just jamming, huh?"

And I instinctively just say, "If there wasn't any music on, I'd be jamming to the music in my own head."

And then I look up... and there is this handsome man.

He's about six feet tall.

He has broad shoulders, and even though it is dark, he has a smile that seems to light up the night.

And he is standing right in front of the bar that I'm going into.

So I walk into the bar, and I can feel his eyes on me.

I say to my friend Tierney, "There's a hot guy out there."

I say hi to my friend Mike, and I buy him a birthday beer.

I buy myself a beer, too.

At that time, I had a really filthy habit of smoking cigarettes.

I don't recommend it.

So I went outside, and I was smoking a cigarette, and this same man was out there.

And we get to talking, and he introduces himself to me and his name is Cole.

We have a little bit of a conversation, and I end up going back inside, and I tell Tierney, "Hey, Tierney, that hot guy out there "is definitely hitting on me, and I'm hitting on him."

So I go back outside, and I smoke another cigarette, and this man follows me outside.

Ha, ha.

We have more conversation.

We go back inside, and he goes back out, and I follow him.

And this continues for about a half an hour.

I do not recommend it.

In about a half an hour, I swear, we must have smoked a pack of cigarettes.

But I found out a lot of information in this 30 minutes.

Cole was seven years at the same job.

Check.

He had his own apartment, and his mom was living with him, not the other way around.

Awesome.

He had two long-term relationships with two different women-- not at the same time-- that he had lived with, which was great.

He was committed, right?

He had no children, no ex-wives.

He had an energy that matched my energy, and I don't find that often.

And he had, like, a confidence that just commanded attention.

And in only 30 minutes, I really felt like I had known him forever.

But, I'm a single lady.

I had a first date to get to.

So I thought, we've got a connection and I should probably get his number.

So, I go to give him my number... and he won't take it.

He tells me that if he contacted me and I did not respond, that it would just break his heart.

Lord, he's got game, too.

(laughter) Whoo!

(chuckles) So, I play along and I take the number, but I take it quick because I got a first date to get to, and I don't want to keep Matt waiting.

So I get in the car, and I start driving across the city, And I'm getting hot and I'm getting sweaty.

It's not a good look for a first date.

And I'm getting anxious and my heart is beating out of my chest, and I can't stop thinking about Cole.

So, I kid you not.

I pull over, and I take out my phone and I text Cole, and I say, "It's Briana.

I am interested.

Winky face."

(laughter) And I get back on the road and I head to my first date.

So I get to the bar, and as I'm walking by the window, I can see that Matt is there waiting for me, like he should be.

And he sees me, and he's really excited.

And I walk into the door, and he gets up and he's super excited.

And he comes and he gives me the biggest hug ever.

And I give him a hug back, too.

But it was the way you hug your grandma's friends.

And I had no control over that, I was not expecting that.

So about five minutes into the date, I stand up, take a $20 bill out of my purse, and I put it on the table.

And I look at Matt and I say, "Hey, you're a super nice guy.

"Really awesome to have met you.

"But I'm pretty sure that I just met the guy that I'm going to marry."

(audience murmurs) And Matt is no longer smiling.

He is confused.

He's, like, trying to gather his thoughts.

But before he can even say anything, I turn around and I walk out the door.

And I called Cole, and he answered.

And we have been together ever since.

We have a nine-year-old son.

His name is Cole also.

And this year, we're celebrating ten years of marriage.

(cheers and applause) So, Matt, if you're out there and you're listening, I'm not crazy.

And you actually had a big part to do with me meeting the love of my life and I just want to say, "Thank you."

(cheers and applause) ♪