Nicole and Alex are a couple of nerds living in one of Chicago’s suburbs. Nicole has her LCPC and works for a nonprofit mental-health outreach agency, and Alex edits books. They share a love of board games and their three cats: Rogue, Siryn, and Pixie (whose names are all both fantasy terms and X-Men characters).

The couple first met at Grand Valley State University during a show for the student-run theatre group. Alex was onstage and Nicole was working backstage. After a few years of dating, Alex proposed to Nicole in a lovely gazebo in the theatre town of Stratford, Ontario. They moved to Chicago, then got married in 2016.

A year into their marriage, when Nicole was diagnosed with (and, more importantly, beat) breast cancer, Nicole tested positive for the BRCA gene, which means they were all but guaranteed to pass it on to their children. IVF was the only way they could cut this thing out of their family gene pool. And thanks to Magnolia Tree, they can actually make it happen.