Your Big Day Giveaway + Honoring Valentine's and National Donor Day

We want to start by thanking you ♡ for the response we received from the Your Big Day Giveaway, it was everything we could have asked for and more!

Let’s give a big round of applause for Taylor Givens and Collin Kobelja, winners of the Your Big Day Giveaway! After both receiving heart transplants, Taylor Givens and Collin Kobelja recovered in adjacent rooms, unaware the other existed. They had no idea their life-saving procedures in June 2011 would give them a new chance at life and the chance for love. 

“All of the things fell into place for us to be together are wild. Everything has happened exactly as it needed to happen,” Taylor, 24, told KIND Kaley Foundation. 

Collin Kobelja and Taylor Givens both received heart transplants

on the same day in 2011 - Seven years later, the two are happily engaged.

Although Collin and Taylor both received heart transplants on the same day in 2011, it wasn’t until June of 2016 that Collin truly connected with Taylor. On the fifth anniversary of his second transplant, he was visiting to thank the INOVA transplant team. Givens was in the hospital after having her tonsils out and she asked him to pop by. “Collin left the room and my mom was like, ‘He was flirting with you,’” Taylor said. “We have been emotionally inseparable since.”

They began dating long distance. After Collin graduated from University of California Irvine, he planned to move to Northern Virginia. Immediately before his return, they learned more bad news: Taylor had Burkitt lymphoma, an aggressive cancer likely caused by her body’s reaction to the transplant. 

“This is something neither one of us was expecting,” Taylor said. But she was glad to have Collin by her side. “Collin took me to every infusion,” she said. “When I was sick and throwing up until 2 in the morning he was sitting up with me.” 

Collin Kobelja and Taylor Givens, 
planning their dream wedding!

Recently engaged, Collin and Taylor we’re nominated for the Your Big Day Giveaway by Ms. Kobelja, Collins mother. Locks of Love partnered with KIND Kaley Foundation for the Your Big Day Giveaway, which honored Valentine’s and National Donor Day by making one couples dream wedding a reality and Taylor and Collins story truly blew us away!

Thanks to the KIND Kaley Foundation and Locks of Love partnership, Collin and Taylor Givens are excited to soon plan their dream wedding! 

As Taylor and Collin plan their Big Day, we hope their story shows the importance of organ donation. “We are not living some sort of superhero life. Organ transplants gave us a normal life,” Taylor said.

To learn more about being an organ donor visit Donate Life.

Read Taylor and Collins full story here.