Pate and Bye Celebrate Engagement, Momentum Heading into Grand Prix de France

The Grand Prix season is just getting started and ice dancers Eva Pate and Logan Bye are already in the middle of their 2022-23 international campaign. The duo, in their fourth season together as a team, have been making waves on the international circuit, capturing a trio of silver medals in as many events.
 
"It feels good to have this level of success so early in the season," Pate said. "We've been up against some very tough teams, and I think that we did not expect to do so well. We appreciate the success that we've had so far, but we know that there is still a lot of work to do."
 
Pate and Bye hope to continue their upward trajectory this season and are working hard to climb the very talented ladder both domestically and on the international scene. The couple makes their Grand Prix entrance this season later this week at Grand Prix de France in the western city of Angers, the first time the city has played host in the history of the event.
 
"It's daunting, but at the same time we've been pretty level-headed with regards to our training as we prepare for France," Bye explained. "We have done what we need to do to be as prepared as possible, and it comes down to us trusting in our training and knowing that we have done the work."
 
This year has been a whirlwind for Pate and Bye, as they are learning to train and compete in a packed autumn season for the first time. With so much to celebrate on the ice, the duo has had little time to digest what has transpired off the ice. In August, Bye asked for Pate's hand in marriage, in a romantic yet somewhat comedic sequence of events.
 
The couple started dating back in December of 2018, before they formed their partnership on ice. As the relationship progressed, Pate and Bye began to discuss the possibility of getting married, and Bye decided that he would pop the question sometime over the summer.
 
"In June my plan was to go check on a ring by myself, but Eva said to me that she wanted to help pick out the ring," he said. "We went shopping at Walmart and the jewelry store was next door, and we went inside and started looking around. Eva asked me what I was looking for, which I thought was pretty cute."
 
On that day, Bye left the store with a ring in hand, and all that was left to do was to plan the proposal. Two months later, Bye felt like the timing was right, so he set out to make the engagement official.
 
"I pulled out the ring and hid the box in my pocket ready to go, and Eva decided that she wanted to put up some fall decorations in our apartment" he recalled of that day in mid-August. "I knew that she would see the box in my pocket because it sticks out, so I decided to put it under a hat on our little bar."
 
Pate interjected, "It was funny because we don't have a lot of fall decorations, but one of them is a couple of scarecrows that have legs that dangle over the counter. I was going to put them where the hat was, and so I moved it. It was one of those hats with the mesh in the back so I could see the box and obviously knew what it was. So, I said, 'Logan, you're so bad at hiding things!'"
 
Bye's plan was to take Pate out on their flower-covered balcony on that beautiful August evening and propose under a canopy of lights in a very romantic scene.
 
"I got up and took the box from her hand, and I don't think that she expected me to (propose) right away," he shared. "I dropped down on one knee and asked her to marry me. It was a little terrifying, but she said yes."
 
The newly-engaged couple, fresh off a podium finish at the Lake Placid Ice Dance International, turned their attention to their two Challenger Series events — the U.S. International Figure Skating Classic, also in Lake Placid, New York, and the Ondrej Nepela Memorial in Bratislava, Slovak Republic. In each of their events, Pate and Bye were on the cusp of breaking the 180-point mark for the first time in their career.
 
"We learned a lot about where we were in our development," Pate said of the early-season events. "We have a lot to work on and hammer before we travel to France. We're bringing a sharper free leg and arms and we've worked on our lines. Although our energy was good in our previous competitions, when I watch the programs back, it's still not where we want it to be, so we are continuously working hard on that."
 
This season's rhythm dance is a blend of exciting Samba music bookending a passionate rhumba choreographed by ballroom dance champion Oksana Zolotarevskaya.
 
"We're continuing to work on this dance to make it look more authentic," Pate said. "We've worked with ballroom people to get more of the look and feel of the samba and rhumba. With such a fast-paced dance, we were working on making sure that we could keep up with the energy of the music and now we are focusing on the details."
 
The music that Pate and Bye have selected for their free dance is iconic in the sport of figure skating. The duo has selected to perform to Bill Wheelan's "Reel Around the Sun" from the popular dance tour "Riverdance," made popular by Jason Brown's free skate that went viral on YouTube.
 
"His program was iconic," Bye said of Brown's 2014 program. "We have done our research and know that this music has a lot to live up to, but we want to do it our own way. We thought about an Egyptian theme and thought about a Charlie Chaplin program, but given Eva's (Irish) heritage, we wanted to give it a shot."
 
"The way that the program is laid out, there are two minutes of slower music and then two minutes of fast that is nonstop," Pate shared. "The beginning of the program it's like waking up and breathing nice and slow in the mountains as we watch an Irish sunrise, and then it's like time to go with the fast section."
 
Coach Igor Shpilband was not initially sold on the idea, but when he was in Beijing in February for the Olympic Games, Pate and Bye worked with choreographer Pasquale Camerlengo to put something together as kind of a trial run.
 
"When he got back, we showed him the program," Bye recalled. "He said that he actually really liked it for us, and so we continued to develop it."
 
With a month of solid training under their belt's since competing in Bratislava, Pate and Bye are looking forward to getting back on competition ice.
 
"We've gotten some good advice as far as taking each competition as a test to see what works and what doesn't work," said Pate. We'll see what happens in France, enjoy our time there, and then look at what we need to do as the U.S. Championships approach."