It's New York in the early 2000s and Melbourne artist Stephen Reynolds had snagged himself a ticket to the hottest party in town.
The 30-year-old painter had been travelling the world with his skateboard and a backpack, partying on the proceeds of a successful art exhibition in Australia.
With the party in full swing, Stephen met Sarah — a fellow artist who happened to be related to one of the most storied presidents in US history.
"Something electric happened when I saw her. We had an immediate connection," Stephen recalled of the moment.
The courtship that followed was "brief but powerful." After several months of travel, Stephen returned to New York and proposed to Sarah within weeks.
He would later learn that Sarah was a granddaughter of former US president Jimmy Carter.
The elder statesman would eventually become a man who Stephen knew as a mentor, beloved family member, and great-grandfather to his two daughters.
But before they developed their deep bond, Stephen had to overcome Carter's reservations about his granddaughter marrying an Australian "playboy".
Passing the Carter family test
Prior to meeting his now wife Sarah Reynolds, Stephen sent regular email updates to his brother back home in Australia with wild tales from his travel escapades as a young single man.
His brother compiled his adventures into a blog, which later landed on the former president's desk.
Once he was engaged to Sarah, Stephen was invited on a family trip to the Carter family home in southern Georgia — the first big test. Here he found himself standing face-to-face with the nation's former commander in chief in his living room.
"The first thing he said to me was, 'I saw your blog. I didn't like it'," he recalled.
He quickly learnt of the president's protective streak and competitive spirit.
"He's a lovely, lovely man but he has an edge to him… and he definitely tests you," he said.
A successful skeet shooting competition helped Stephen win the former president's favour. But it wasn't until he and Sarah began having children that Stephen felt he had surpassed his "playboy" reputation in the president's eyes.
"He had us doing archery … skeet shooting, running — anything that could be made into a competition," Stephen said.
"There was a lot of firing guns, which is not really my thing, but I won the skeet shooting, which was a big plus in Jimmy's book."
The former president would soon teach Stephen to boil peanuts, critique his artwork and Stephen would ride alongside Carter’s motorcade on an electric scooter.
At first Stephen hadn't thought twice about the Carter family connection, but his world soon became inflected by motorcades, political receptions and Secret Service agents.
"I had to get very ready for the Jimmy Carter world. And it is a world, there's no denying that. Once you're in that family, travelling with them, it's quite a production," he said.
"You're meeting [former speaker of the House] Nancy Pelosi and holding hands with [former president] Bill Clinton.
"It's been totally surreal. It's unusual and quite incredible to be a witness to it, certainly from the vantage point that I've had."
The protective grandpa who just happened to be a president
Jimmy Carter has 11 surviving grandchildren. One of them is Sarah, whose mother Elizabeth Brasfield married the former president's eldest son Jack Carter in 1992.
Growing up, Sarah was unaware of her grandfather's notability until she attended a book signing with him as a teenager and witnessed queues of people line the streets for hours to catch a glimpse of him.
She was on her way to the Alabama Hills for a weekend of camping with Stephen, their two teenage daughters and her sister's family when she received a call advising of her grandfather's death.
"My grandad had been preparing us for this ... but it was still a shock."
Jimmy Carter had suffered several major health issues in the years since he held office, including brain cancer, liver cancer and brain surgery.
He spent about two years in hospice care in his home state of Georgia.
"We had a couple of close calls over the past three years," Sarah said, referencing a time doctors told her family in 2023 he may have just three days to live.
Since then, Sarah has kept bags packed and ready to go for the family in the event they had to leave for Washington at a moment's notice to attend the days-long funeral ceremonies.
A fond memory of her grandparents was a time they visited her apartment in Harlem in New York, where she had been living as an artist in her early 20s.
The Secret Service deemed Sarah and Stephen's building unsafe.
But sitting across from them at breakfast, the elderly presidential couple told their granddaughter they had jogged several blocks to her apartment with Secret Service agents and introduced themselves to everyone in the building.
"They knocked on every door. And I was like 'you did what?'" she said.
"I think he did it in a way to make sure people knew I was looked after. He was protective in a sweet way."
Scraping chewing gum from church pews
The former peanut farmer from southern Georgia earned himself a reputation as a man of the people.
It wasn't uncommon to spot Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter's names on the volunteer roster to scrape chewing gum from the bottom of the pews in their local church on a Saturday afternoon, Stephen said.
"That's just the kind of people they were," he said.
"They just did that all the time."
"They had this dual life where they're these enormous figures in American life … and yet that's balanced by very humble kind of small town living. And that's the side to him I saw most commonly."
Carter died in the final days of 2024, aged 100. His death has set off a series of elaborate ceremonies to honour the life of the 39th president.
The latest of which was a state funeral held at the National Cathedral in Washington DC, which was attended by President Joe Biden, president-elect Donald Trump, all living former US presidents and outgoing Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
His body will be laid to rest by the blueberry bushes on the grounds of his ranch home in Plains, Georgia, next to his wife of 77 years, Rosalynn Carter.
