Trust the Process: A Trainual Love Story (Featuring Clayton Echard)

Some people meet at work.
Some people meet through friends.
Some people meet on dating apps.

And then there’s Annie and Caden, who met because of the best employee training app on the market.

Okay, so maybe we’re biased. But they did meet because of a very specific Trainual shirt you might recognize.

It says: Trust the process.

You know the one. 

And yeah — if you’re already thinking, “No shot this is real,” that’s exactly why we had to hear the full story straight from them.

So we brought Annie and Caden to Trainual HQ, sat them down, and let our friend Clayton Echard (you know, Season 26’s The Bachelor) uncover perhaps our favorite love story ever told.

It goes like this…

Where it all started

Annie and Caden met in passing at a conference. The kind of moment you don’t normally think twice about at those sorts of things. Annie had come straight from the gym, donning her Trainual “Trust the process” t-shirt, when Caden took notice of a familiar brand out in the wild.  

Quick on his toes, he decided to shoot his shot and asked about her ties to the SaaS-famous shirt (toot-toot).

They started talking, and somewhere in their brief conversation, Annie handed him her number.

On first impression, Annie thought Caden gave “Summer sales bro” energy, which anyone on LinkedIn can relate to, and had already decided she’d likely send a polite “thanks but no thanks” later.

But Caden played it smooth and let their first conversation marinate. (We see you, Caden. 😏)

Clayton loved that, because it’s the kind of small detail that separates “random encounter” from “this might be real.”

A few days passed, and he asked her to play pickleball — not knowing it was her favorite thing in the world. Could it get more serendipitous? 

Annie was coming off a sprained ankle and hadn’t played in months. But who can say no to pickleball?

Worst case, she figured, it would be one fun game, and then she’d move on.

Except it was fun. And then there was another date. And another. And suddenly, the “sales bro” label started fading, because Annie was seeing something else: consistency, effort, and a guy who actually listened.

The moment it got real

Clayton asked what everyone’s wondering: “What made you go from ‘this is nice’ to ‘oh… this is serious’?”

Annie talked about a conversation where she opened up about where she was at. And instead of rushing it, or getting defensive, Caden listened — fully. Validated. Stayed steady.

In Annie’s words: emotionally intelligent men win.

And Clayton jumped on it immediately — like he was talking to the entire internet:

“So emotional intelligence is what won it over… did you hear that, men? If you don’t have it, you’re getting friend-zoned. If you do… You might just trust the process and fall in love.”

For Caden, the moment things shifted from “this is great” to “this is it” happened during a family trip — the kind where everything just quietly clicks. Time together, long conversations, and the realization that this was someone he wanted to build a life with.

Along the way, ‘trust the process’ stopped being a funny coincidence and became a reminder that they were building something worth the long haul.

In moments of doubt or growing pains, they’d say it out loud — Trust the Process – choosing patience, commitment, and each other over any obstacle.

The proposal

Clayton, of course, gets to the good part: “Okay. Proposal. Tell me everything.”

When it came time to propose, Annie had a feeling — mostly because Caden, who normally enjoys slow, peaceful walks, suddenly turned into a speed-walker with a mission.

“He was speed-walking,” Annie said. “And I was stressed.”

Caden had planned out what he wanted to say. Then he got down on one knee and forgot every word.

He opened the ring box (which lit up, because of course it did), and Annie got distracted for a split second. Caden had to gently bring her back to the point.

She said yes.

The shirt comes back (engagement photos)

By the time the engagement photos came around, the shirt was officially part of the lore.

Caden wanted it in the shoot, so he worked with Annie’s sister to sneak the shirt away ahead of time and bring it to him.

So the shirt that started the story shows up again — not as a gimmick, but as a little nod like, yeah… this is actually how it all started.

Trainual crashes the wedding

And then came the wedding.

Annie and Caden’s reception was beautiful, full of joy, laughter, and people who had supported them from the very beginning. Shawn from Trainual’s Customer Experience team and his wife, Monica, stopped by to celebrate Annie, an amazing Trainual customer and friend.

Shawn showed up wearing his own Trust the Process t-shirt.

When Caden spotted it across the room, he lit up, pointed, and loudly called over his grandparents:

“Hey Grandma and Grandpa — come here! Look! That! That’s the reason I’m married!”

Trainual didn’t plan to be part of their love story. But there it was — from a gym shirt, to a first conversation, to engagement photos, to a wedding reception moment that made everyone laugh.

Before the night ended, Shawn left a note in their guest book that summed it all up perfectly:

“Remember that the key to a good relationship is being each other’s BFF… and always trust the process.”

Happily ever after

It feels only right to end where we began: What does “trust the process” mean to Annie and Caden now?

Their answers turned out to be the heart of everything.

For Caden, life is a series of problems waiting to be solved. Trusting the process means finding your person — or your people — and learning how to communicate, work through the hard parts, and come out stronger on the other side.

For Annie, it’s about confidence. Life itself is the process. And when you move through it with a little more trust and a little less panic, you tend to end up exactly where you’re meant to be.

So yeah, if you ever see someone wearing a “Trust the Process” shirt…

Say something.

Worst case, you make their day.

Best case… you end up married.