It wasn’t the man himself that first attracted Kate Raposa to her future husband — it was his music.
Kate had just started college at the South Dakota School of Mines & Technology in Rapid City in the fall of 2016. She’d seen Caleb Musick around campus. The two sat next to each other in a chemistry class, but she didn’t really acknowledge him until one day she ran into him later in the dorm kitchen.
He was playing cards with a couple of friends, one of which was also a friend of Kate’s. As Kate left the kitchen, she recognized a Mumford & Sons song playing around the card game.
“I said, ‘Oh, whose music is this?’” Kate said.
It was Caleb’s.
Three years later, Caleb would play the same music as he got down on one knee to propose.
“Music means so much to me because it’s such a large part of who I am, and Kate respects that,” Caleb said. “She’s the same way. Mumford & Sons tied it all together for me.”
In some ways, the two had a whirlwind romance. They first really started talking when they got coffee after a chemistry test. The first date — lunch at Qdoba — came only days later. And within two weeks of starting to date, the two embarked on a 7-hour road trip to Denver to see, of course, a Mumford & Sons concert.
That road trip set the stage for the years to come. Caleb knew it took a great deal of trust for Kate to travel so far with someone she’d just met. He didn’t take it for granted.
“There was this moment (at the concert) where I just stepped back and looked at her,” he said. “Two weeks in, that was an inkling that this girl knows what she wants, and I want her to be a part of my life.”
Their first few months of dating also took them on a spring break road trip to California with Caleb’s brother and his girlfriend, the same mutual friends who had been playing cards in the dorm kitchen months earlier.
“It took very little time before we realized we had so, so much in common,” Kate said of Caleb. “That never happened to me before.”
Despite moving quickly into dating and traveling, the two took other aspects of their relationship slowly. They waited six months to say, “I love you,” and they spent much of their first year together learning about each other and figuring out how to communicate effectively.
“It took a long time to get to where our relationship is as solid as it is now,” Kate said. “We’ve just learned each other’s dynamic.”
The two found unique ways to express love in their relationship. They’d take turns hiding messages of love on sticky notes around each other’s homes, and on anniversaries, they began a tradition of setting up scavenger hunts.
The most significant of these hunts came on September 21, 2019, their three-year dating anniversary.
Caleb arranged five clues, each with a special gift for Kate given to her by a friend or family member. The last clue led her to Canyon Lake Park, where Caleb was waiting with a ring, a Mumford & Sons song playing in the background, and a very important question.
“Nothing in the world could’ve prepared me for that moment,” Kate said.
She accepted his proposal. He knew she would say yes.
“There’s never been a shred of doubt ever, I think, in our relationship,” Caleb said. “I would never doubt her. It’s total trust.”
The two plan to wed on December 28, 2020 in Rapid City.
Thinking about the future, both Kate and Caleb said they’re looking forward to having more time together. They can recharge each other’s batteries, Caleb said, and whether they’re taking a several-day road trip or making dinner after a long day, he knows they’ll be happier together.
“Every day we have a lot of fun,” Kate said. “Even on the kind of crappy, kind of ordinary, average days, we’ll go get ice cream, and it ends up being the most fun we’ve had all week.”