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In 2018, Michael (Mikee) Chaplin ‘21 was working weekends as a cashier in the Hunt Dining Hall during his sophomore year. He frequently saw the volleyball team enter the dining hall for meals. One day, Mikee asked some members of the team if they would introduce him to a certain player, Estefania (Steffy) Walls ‘21, now Steffy Chaplin.

“They were no help,” Mikee laughed.

But one day, Steffy walked up to the grill and ordered food. Mikee didn’t waste the opportunity. The two shared some banter, and Walls walked away. Seconds later, Mikee’s manager told him to take his lunch break, using the time to sit with Steffy.

He first approached Steffy’s friend and teammate, Emily Tran ‘22, and then joined the conversation with Steffy. Within minutes, they realized they had more in common than a dining hall encounter — both were international business majors, both balancing life as student-athletes, and both raised by parents from Mexico City.

Eventually, Mikee reached out via direct message, asking Steffy to join him at Cabo Bob’s. Their first official date was breakfast at Gourdough's Big Fat Donuts & Coffee and a movie at Alamo Drafthouse.

Mikee graduated in May 2021, landing a job providing IT solutions, and Steffy graduated in December 2021, transitioning from an intern at the Austin-based cybersecurity company, CrowdStrike, to a global sales program coordinator.

Two years later, Chaplin’s three-month engagement plan came to fruition.

Mikee asked Steffy’s friends and family to stop sharing their locations with her. He flew in her out-of-state friends and told her he had a work team dinner and significant others were encouraged to join. Steffy got her nails done with her girlfriends, secretly planned by Mikee, and he arranged for Emily to call Steffy, saying she had a flat tire and was stuck at St. Edward’s.

“Steffy almost botched the plan because she told her we were already late to dinner and asked to find someone else,” Mikee said.

Mikee grabbed the phone from Steffy and told Emily they were on the way.

They entered campus from behind the baseball fields, which Steffy found suspicious. As they approached Teresa Hall, a sign read, “Steffy.” They continued driving up the hill where another sign read, “There’s no flat tire.” And once they made it to the top of the hill, the final sign read, “It’s time.”

As they walked to the front of Main Building, there was a stand with candles, flowers and photos of the two. Mikee pulled a letter out of his back pocket and asked Steffy to read it.

“In my head, the way I thought she was going to work out, she was going to read it out loud (and) slowly enough,” Mikee said. “There was a specific sentence that she was going to read, and that was the moment I would take out the ring.”

Instead, overwhelmed with emotion, Steffy sped through the letter. Mikee fumbled for the ring, abandoning his perfectly rehearsed cue, and dropped to one knee anyway.

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Once he proposed, photographer and St. Edward’s Marketing Manager Angelica Carrete, captured the moment. Steffy asked if her sister, Natalia, and friend Emily knew about the plan, and Mikee excitedly called them out to surprise her.

While they did not have a work dinner to attend, Mikee had dinner reservations at Fogo de Chão with their parents waiting to celebrate the engagement. This three-part event ended at Mikee’s house with a surprise of about 45 people. From there, they headed out into the city to continue the celebration.

“I was definitely super surprised,” Steffy said, because I knew it was happening that year, I just didn't know it was happening in the summer.”

On September 27, 2025, the two returned to their shared roots, marrying at Parroquia de San Miguel Arcángel in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico — surrounded by family, friends and former teammates who had witnessed their story from the beginning.

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