Duluth’s curling pair are a couple. A couple of friends.

America’s curling sweethearts aren’t sweethearts.

As Duluth’s own Cory Thiesse and Korey Dropkin blazed their way toward the mixed doubles curling silver medal at the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan, fans turned from the Games to Google.

Each time their curling matches or Olympic highlights aired, the same search spiked in popularity: “Are Cory Thiesse and Korey Dropkin married?” Type their names into the search bar and the autocomplete offers up ...dating? ...couple? ...relationship?

Boy Korey and Girl Cory, as they’re known around the Duluth Curling Club, are very much in love. With other people. She’s married. He’s engaged. They’re teammates and #friendshipgoals.

Although the story of how they teamed up in 2022 does sound like a match made in heaven.

Dropkin invited Thiesse to The Pickwick restaurant in Duluth, where he popped the question.

“We were having a beverage, and kind of made small talk early on. And I was just like, you know what, let’s cut straight to it,” he told the Minnesota Star Tribune earlier this month. “You want to curl mixed doubles with me?”

“Korey asked me to go to the Pickwick. Just the two of us,” Thiesse said in the same interview. “Thought it was a little funny, but it was just the two of us and kind of random.”

Both of them had tried to make it to the Olympics with other partners, without success. She didn’t have to think long about her answer.

“I was like, sure,” she said.

And the rest was Olympic history.

“We just clicked right away as a team because we are such good friends,” Thiesse said during a wholesome NBC feature on the teammates and the close-knit curling community of Duluth. “We both knew that it was kind of the start of something really special.”

To make it a little easier, Terri Bly, a licensed clinical psychologist with the LynLake Centers for Wellbeing, put together some tips for making friends as an adult.

“Making friends in the Twin Cities, maybe Minnesota in general, is really hard,” Bly said. “I moved here when I was 23, I’ve been here for 30 years, and I find it really hard to make friends. Not to make acquaintances, but to make strong, close friendships.”

The advice she gives her clients is the same advice she took herself: Find your people.

If there’s an activity or pastime you like, you’re likely to find friends who enjoy the same things. Bly, who loves the theater, has started auditioning for plays, reconnecting with fellow theater people. She and her husband took up pickleball and found a built-in friend group.

“They get me,” she said. “And I get them. The energies match.”

Amid the stress and pain of these past months, “we are hearing all those stories of how much more connected people feel to their community,” she said. “They’re actually benefiting from this sense of community and these friendships and relationships they’re making. There’s some good stuff coming out of a really horrible, horrible situation.”

So go find something you love and you just might find people you’ll like.