Article & photos by Danielle Rivera www.danfredophotography.com

Imagine this happening on your first date.

You invite your love interest to meet you out at a bar, from which, you plan on leaving to grab a bite to eat. You show up early to grab a drink with your buddies and open up a tab-a tab you agreed to paying yourself because you’re a good friend. When your date arrives, you invite her to have a drink with your pals and she does. After your glasses are empty, your date tries to settle the tab. You thank her, but respectfully decline her offer because you’ve all consumed almost $100 worth of alcohol. She insists on paying anyway and you joke that she can, but only if your credit card gets declined (which it won’t). But it does. So she pays. That’s exactly what happened on the Penas’ first date.

Now married, Mike and Jessica look back on that night and can’t help but laugh. It was a storybook beginning to a beautiful relationship born at the front door of a salsa club. After weeks of seeing Jess around at the venues he promotes, Mike finally worked up the nerve to ask her for her phone number “the right way”-written on paper with a borrowed pen. Let there be no doubt: chivalry is very much alive on the dance scene.