About Us

Hello! We are excited to share our story with you. Feel free to reach out to us at ryanjamilahadoption@gmail.com or (616) 965-6820 with any questions.

We met in 2007 when Jamilah waited tables at Applebee’s. Ryan and his friends often came in after softball league for late-night appetizers and Jamilah was their favorite server. In the fall of 2008, we met for coffee and found we shared many values. Jamilah knew that night that Ryan could be “the one.” Fortunately, he realized this as well, it just took him about a year to do so. 

Our journey to marriage was indicative of our personalities. Jamilah is intuitive and sometimes impulsive whereas Ryan is patient, slow to change and holds on to the big picture. We are pretty low fuss people and so we decided to have a short engagement and to go where they do marriage best-Las Vegas! We had a simple wedding and enjoyed seeing the Blue Man Group and Cirque du Soleil while we were there.

We were married for several years before we knew we were ready to grow our family. In 2017, we learned that it was very unlikely we would have children biologically; it was then that we decided to pursue adoption. We love the idea of open adoption and the thought of growing our family with not just a child but through our relationships with his/her biological family as well.