Ally Price and Erik Bakken have known each other since the first grade, and they’ve been friends the entire time.

They’ve grown up together, going to the same schools, taking the same classes, and sharing several interests. Erik moved here from Cincinnati when he was 1, and when the two met, they clicked right away. They didn’t expect to win the superlative for “Best Couple That Never Was” until they heard that all their friends had voted for them, when it started to seem like an actual possibility — especially when more people than just their close friends told them that they voted for the pair.

“I was just excited to get a cookie to be honest. And it’s cool to be in the yearbook,” said Price, in response to how she felt about winning the award.

Erik and Ally weren’t surprised to be nominated — people have been pairing the two together for years. They’re pretty used to it. They agreed that in being nominated for this award, people on the outside might think it would be awkward for them, but for Erik and Ally it really just meant that they’re very close and quite good friends. If it had been two random students who didn’t really know each other who were paired together, it might have been a little awkward. That was not the case with Ally and Erik.

They share many classes together (save for the occasional elective), but desire to pursue differing careers. Ally wants to go into the medical field and Erik wants to be an architect. They’ve taken classes together unintentionally for all of high school — especially because they both sign up for classes that might only run one hour of the day, so their other classes just kind of fall into place.

“We both do a lot of crap, I guess,” Ally said, laughing. They share a few extracurricular activities, too: Noctiluca, Jazz Band, Math Team, and Pep Band. When asked if they planned on keeping in contact in college, they responded:

“Yeah.” “Probably.” “We better.” “Can’t break our snap streak.”