Cupid Finds A Match At The Ohio Renaissance Festival

HARVEYSBURG, OH -- One never knows what they might find at the Ohio Renaissance Festival — knights, queens, jousting, turkey legs and, for Lucy Taylor and Matt Miller, a little help from Cupid behind the scenes.

Taylor and Miller recently returned to the festival in Harveysburg, where their relationship has some special history. Although the couple first connected through a dating app while living in Indiana, they quickly discovered they had something unusual in common: both worked at the Ohio Renaissance Festival.

“My name is Lucy Taylor, and my name is Matt Miller,” the two said while sharing the story of how they met.

Taylor said they met about 2½ years ago. And it was on Miller’s dating profile, she noticed a photograph of him wearing horns and decided to ask a question.

“I saw him in a picture in horns and asked if he had ever been to the Ohio Ren Fair,” Taylor recalled.

Miller’s answer was unexpected.

“I work there!” he told her.

Taylor had an equally surprising response.

“Funny, you should say that, for I also work there!”

The coincidence went even further. Taylor participated in the festival parade each day, while Miller worked at a booth located along the parade route.

“He was right along the route of the parade, and I was in the parade every day passing him,” Taylor said.

Miller, who previously lived in the Dayton area before moving to Indianapolis, said he had worked at the festival for six years. This is the first year he has not been working there, which actually worked to his advantage when it came time to propose.

“It made it the perfect time to propose because I don’t have to run back to my booth,” Miller joked.

Taylor, who grew up in Shelbyville, Indiana, admitted she had some idea that an engagement might be coming.

“My birthday is in October. I was expecting it a little bit because I helped pick out the ring and because I am a little picky,” she said with a laugh.

But while Taylor had some input on the ring, she said the proposal itself belonged entirely to Miller.

“Actually getting the ring and doing the proposal was him,” she said. “He planned everything.”

The couple said neither is working at the Renaissance Festival this season because both started new jobs and were unable to get Saturdays off. Still, the festival remains an important part of their story — first as the place they unexpectedly discovered they both worked and now as the setting for their engagement.

The couple does not plan to hold their wedding at the festival, but Taylor said they have already talked about possibly returning someday for a Renaissance-style vow renewal.

“Kind of like how people do it in Vegas in front of Elvis,” Taylor joked.

For Taylor and Miller, the Ohio Renaissance Festival may always be a place filled with costumes, characters and memories — along with the unlikely story of two people who met online only to discover they had already been crossing paths at the same festival all along.

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