Adeoye (25) and Adebola (26) first connected on Twitter in May 2021 when he reacted to her photo.
On this week’s Love Life, they talk about the dinner date that forced him to make a move, and a hot air balloon proposal 100 feet in the air that she almost ruined by finding the ring first.
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Adeoye: It was May 2021, and the one memory I held onto was when I saw her fleet. She had posted one from Landmark Beach, and she looked really good. I reacted to it and told her she was pretty. She said thank you, and the conversation ended there, but I couldn’t get her off my mind.
Before this interaction, I’d seen some of her tweets on the timeline and always thought she was really relatable.
I texted again a couple of days later, properly this time. We’ve spoken every single day since.
Adebola: My earliest memory of Adeoye is from when I was 13. My best friend in church was his secondary school classmate, and she used to come to church every Sunday with gist about her classmates. So I knew of him from a considerable distance. Then, somehow, we both ended up at UNILAG. I saw him around a few times, but we barely had any interaction. I even followed him on Instagram, but he didn’t follow back.
Adeoye: It’s interesting she mentioned seeing me in UNILAG. She was there the whole time, and I had no idea.
Adebola: Anyway, when he reacted to my Twitter fleet in 2021, I already had an idea of who he was. He didn’t know that, though.
Adebola: In a way, yes. I’d just come out of a really toxic relationship the previous year, and I’d made up my mind to take a long break from dating. I was talking to a few people casually, but nothing was going anywhere. Then Adeoye texted, he seemed different from the very first conversation. He was easy to talk to. I thought, “Okay, this might be something.”
But I wasn’t about to rush into anything.
Adeoye: For me, I shot my shot from day one. I didn’t come and say I just wanted to be friends and then slowly worked my way up to admitting I liked her. I told her she was really pretty from the first proper conversation. But I also had context for why I wasn’t just looking for another talking stage.
Earlier that year, I’d been with someone who had a long-term boyfriend, and I was essentially the side piece. When I left that situation, one of the things I literally prayed for was my own person. Someone I didn’t have to share with anyone. So when I met Adebola, I already knew what I was looking for, and she felt like the answer to that prayer from very early.
Adeoye: Within the same week, I invited her to my birthday party at my aunt’s place. When she walked in and sat down in the middle of everyone, she was on a completely different level. She looked prettier than everyone else. Adebola was just a different breed.
Adebola: Honestly, I had absolutely no idea any of this was going on in his head. I thought I was just going to a birthday party with a new friend. But he clearly had a mission.
Adeoye: A few days after the party, I asked her out on a proper date. We went to Papiee’s Meastro in Yaba on the 29th of May. That was when the conversation moved from surface level to something real. I asked about her family, her background, who she is, what she wants and all of that. I was genuinely trying to find out if she was who I thought she was. The date confirmed it.
Adebola: From the very beginning, he was clear that he liked me. He wasn’t playing the friendship game or being ambiguous. He shot his shot immediately, and I appreciated that because it meant I knew where I stood.
Adeoye: After our date, things just kept escalating naturally. We were speaking every day. Our conversations got deeper and deeper. I remember thinking at some point, ”Okay, this is definitely more than just casual interest.” I was spending all my time thinking about her, looking forward to our conversations, and making time for her in my schedule no matter what. She was still in school, and I was doing NYSC while working a side job to survive. Quietly, I was also clearing out. I’d been talking to other people when we first started, but I began cutting them off one by one because even without a label between us, I already knew where I wanted to put my energy.
Adebola: For me, it was gradual, too. The daily conversations, the way he was consistent, the way he made me feel safe to be vulnerable — all of that built up over time. I went from thinking he was just some guy who liked me to realising I actually wanted to build something with him. Once I realised that, I was all in.
Adeoye: Then I found out she had gone on a date, and everything moved faster.
Adeoye: She posted a picture of a space on her Instagram story. Something about it told me it was a restaurant. I’m a culture commentator, and investigative work is part of what I do. I dug around, confirmed it was a restaurant, and then she posted the food later. I knew immediately it was a dinner date. She hadn’t mentioned going anywhere that day, and at that point, we were sharing our day-to-day with each other. So I knew.
Adebola: For context, it was someone I had talked to before Adeoye. He had promised to take me out for my birthday in March but only followed through in June. So to me, it was a late birthday lunch with no romantic intent on my side. I didn’t think it needed an announcement.
Adeoye: I understood all of that later. But in the moment, seeing it was the push I needed. I wasn’t even upset. I thought, “Okay, this girl is smart. She isn’t going to sit around waiting for me to figure myself out.”
So I started plotting. I told my friends I was going to ask her to be my girlfriend. I booked Pondicheri, an Indian restaurant with a great upstairs spot. I deliberately picked the 1st of July because I’m terrible with dates, and I figured having it on the 1st would make it easy to remember.
Adebola: He says the 2nd, but it’s actually 1st. He’s still super bad with dates. Nothing has changed.
Adeoye: Anyway, she said yes. That’s all that matters.
Adeoye: Interesting times. My NYSC stipend was ₦33k, and my job was paying ₦60k, so I was living on roughly ₦80k a month. At the time, you could take someone on a proper date, even on the island, for about ₦40k. So we were going out once a month, seeing each other on weekends, and talking every day. It was a good period. We were also trying to get into each other’s worlds by watching each other’s shows. I watched three and a half seasons of Insecure just for her.
Adebola: I’ve still not gotten past episode 10 of Demon Slayer. Like he says, the early days were beautiful. We were growing as friends and lovers, learning more about each other. But that period also came with navigating friction around some issues.
Adeoye: She had a female friend I wasn’t comfortable with. It wasn’t like I had any problem with the lady herself; it was more the things she would do. She’d put Adebola’s head on her lap on Snapchat, kiss her on camera, post it and tag her. I think she felt like she was in some kind of competition with me. Adebola and I had started dating, and I think the friend felt that our relationship was pulling her away.
Adebola: In my head at the time, that was just how we’d always been as friends. We were best friends and very close, so when Adeoye started expressing his reservations, I got defensive. I felt like he was trying to control who I could spend time with. In hindsight, though, I could see it was getting weird, especially when she started posting throwbacks of those things years later, long after I had already told her he was not comfortable with it. That was when I understood it was intentional.
Adeoye: We fought about it a few times. She was defensive, and I was frustrated. But I never asked her to cut anyone off. I just needed her to see what I was seeing. Eventually, she saw it herself, and that friendship fizzled out on its own.
Adebola: The bigger thing for me in those early days was learning not to go on the defensive every time he raised an issue. Every relationship I’d been in before came with insults the moment there was any conflict. So when Adeoye would bring something to me calmly and just explain where he was coming from, I didn’t know how to receive it. I kept waiting for the blow-up. I kept thinking, okay, here it comes. But it never did. Once I realised that is actually just who he is, I started hearing what he was saying instead of preparing my counter-argument. And it helped us navigate our issues easily. But life was still lifing, we still had other real-life issues that got thrown our way.
Adeoye: I mean, it was just the typical life getting harder before it got better. NYSC finished, I quit the job, and I went into music production full-time. That period was rough. I was going to artists’ camps for days at a stretch. Three days at one camp with nothing but alcohol and plantain chips. No real food. Guys promising payments and going quiet. I eventually took a full year off from the media space to figure out my next move. We weren’t going on dates for months because where was the money?
Adebola: I watched all of it up close. Even when the music was not working, even during the months when nothing was clicking, he never stopped pushing. Watching someone be that consistent made me want to do the same. Before I met him, I’d already been to culinary school in 2020, but I had no real sense of direction. I knew I wanted to cook, but I had no idea how to build something from it. He kept encouraging me and helping me think through how to approach it strategically. I went back to culinary school in 2022. After that, I got a job as a kitchen assistant, worked my way up to chef, then moved through restaurants. All of that happened inside this relationship, and he had a lot to do with why I actually went and did it.
Adeoye: While she was building all of that, things eventually started clicking for me too. I started making content on TikTok, found my lane as a culture commentator, and it grew from there. But through all the years when nothing was working, she never once made me feel small about it. She was always the loudest person in my corner.
Adebola: Speaking of love, I actually said the word first. I remember we’d spent a really good day together, and I was on my way home when I texted him that I thought I loved him. This was about two weeks into the relationship.
Adebola: I know. But that is just how I am. He, however, said he didn’t love me yet but could feel himself falling, and that he wanted to be sure before he said it. That hurt in the moment. But he was right.
Adeoye: I genuinely couldn’t say it and mean it at that point. Earlier that same year, I’d been saying those words to someone else, and it turned out to mean very little. I didn’t want to do that with Adebola. I needed to be sure I was saying it from a real place, not just because the moment felt good. I said it about three weeks into the relationship.
But back to your question, it was very hard to doubt the love when we were both cheering so hard for each other, even when we could no longer go on fancy dates. We’d built something very genuine from the start of the relationship, and that really defined what the future of the relationship could look like.
Adebola: Looking back, I appreciate that he didn’t just confess love to save the moment. It made me stop and ask myself whether I actually loved him or whether I just really liked him and was swept up in the newness of everything. It made the whole thing our foundation solid.
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