Devon LaMachia & Ed Matatall

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Neither of them found Prototype. Somebody brought them.

Ed came because his brother Tim invited him. Devon came the first time because her older sister trained here during a college summer, and came back the second time because her dad talked her into it. Then Ed brought his buddy Tyler. And somewhere in the middle of all that, on a Monday in March of 2024, two people who'd been dragged in by their own families ended up in the same class for the first time.

They got engaged on a beach in Maine twenty-eight months later.

Ed: The Hardest Possible Way To Start

Ed does heating and cooling. Eight years before he walked into Prototype, he'd been training at a CrossFit gym in Millbury — then the gym changed hands, life got busy, work got busy, and he stopped. For eight years.

His brother Tim and his sister-in-law Rachel — whose own story ran two days ago on Day 71 — had been members here for a while. In November 2023, Tim invited him to 24 Heroes in 24 Hours.

Not a No Sweat Intro. Not a drop-in on a light day. A 24-hour Hero workout event, as the first thing he'd done in nearly a decade.

The first faces he saw were Mike and Mark DiRienzo, throwing a football around in the parking lot. He was sore for days afterward. He signed up anyway.

Then he did the thing that makes this story a chain instead of a story. He got his friend Tyler Moore — Day 12 of this series — to start coming too.

Here is what that turned into. In two and a half years, Ed has not taken a single break longer than 45 days. Not one. Through winters, through night school for sheet metal, through a full-time trade. Forty-one percent of his logged workouts are Rx.

He notices the difference from where he came from, too.

Devon: 1,517 Days

Devon's first class here was August 21, 2019. The next day she back squatted 65 pounds for three sets of three.

Then she went back to school. She planned to come back after her senior year, but COVID happened. She did CrossFit out in Hadley during college, then went the home-workout route, and then during her first year of grad school — PA school, clinical rotations, brutal hours — she stopped almost entirely.

Her last class before the gap was January 17, 2020. Her next one was March 13, 2024.

One thousand five hundred and seventeen days.

What ended it was her dad. He'd started coming here, and she convinced him to bring her along. She was nervous walking in — the same way she'd been nervous in 2019.

She remembers that first class back: Coach Gillian running it, Jon and Liza Davis in the room, Karuna Barla nearby. She's since finished PA school, started working as a PA, and rearranged her whole training life around a job with odd hours — she comes to the 4 o'clock now, before her shift.

Since coming back she has logged 104 personal records. Fifteen in 2024. Thirty-nine in 2025. Forty-seven in 2026 with four months still to go.

And that back squat — the 65 pounds from August 2019? In June 2026, she hit 100.

Ninety-Seven Days In The Same Room

Five days after Devon came back, on March 18, 2024, she and Ed logged results on the same day for the first time. They've now done that 97 times.

It started slowly. Ed introduced himself. He started talking to her dad. And then, in the least romantic and most 2024 way imaginable, there was a lot of Wodify liking.

Back and forth. Even on days when one of them didn't make it in.

Then Devon followed him on Instagram, where he has zero posts. "She might like me," Ed figured. After a Saturday class he asked her what she did, and she told him she worked at Swirlin' Scoops — which he knew well, having grown up in Grafton. She told him he should come get ice cream sometime.

He went. It did not go well.

He also threw the ice cream out. He wasn't eating ice cream at the time. He didn't tell her that for months.

What saved it was a text that night. "I didn't think he liked me that much based off that conversation," Devon says, "but he texted me. So I was like, I guess he does."

There's one more detail she wants on the record about this period, which is that the only version of her Ed had ever seen was the post-workout version.

They started dating May 15, 2024.

The Lift Off, And The 160

Before they were dating, they were in what Ed calls the talking stages. Their first date was a rock climbing gym in Worcester. The night before the Lift Off.

She told him she'd come watch if she was up. He was mid-snatch when she walked in.

He hit 160 pounds. It's still his best. And it's the last step of a run that's genuinely absurd when you line the dates up: 95 pounds in February 2024, 145 on April 19, and then 160 eight days later, with her in the room.

"Which I cannot touch that now," he says. "But — extra motivation."

The Open has been good to him too. He logged all four workouts of the 2026 season. And in that Open, in front of the gym, he got his first muscle-up.

Devon's take on the Open is less about her own scores. "Just seeing everyone supporting each other and rooting for everyone despite being on other teams was super fun."

"Please Do Not Propose To Me At This Gym"

Ed's original plan was the gym.

Of course it was. This is where they met, where they'd spent 97 days in the same room, where every important thing in the relationship had started. It's the obvious move.

Devon, entirely independently and well in advance, had told her friend the opposite.

Her friend told Ed absolutely not. He listened.

Instead he spent weeks coordinating with her sisters, her dad and her mom around a family trip to the coast of Maine in July. He had a narrow window — between 8 and 9 in the morning, before her parents arrived at 10, because she didn't know her parents were coming. His last problem was that he wanted her dressed up and she was going swimming, which is a battle he lost. He ended up proposing in a bathing suit.

July 11, 2026. She had no idea.

The news got back here fast anyway. She texted Karuna, Shreeja Pillai and a friend. Ed's brother Tim took a 9am class and mentioned it, and it went through the gym from there.

What It Actually Gave Them

Ask them what their lives would look like without this place and neither of them talks about fitness first.

Ed's answer is shorter. "I don't know where I would be. I can't even imagine my life any different if I didn't start coming."

He'll tell you he wasn't social before. He works in the trades, one-on-one with customers all day now, which is not something his younger self pictured. "You can't just throw headphones in here and put your head down," he says. Devon's version of the same observation, delivered with the specific joy of a fiancée: "I feel like you'd always just be talking to Tyler. And now you're talking to a lot of people. Like, you're never talking to me — it's always someone else."

They both wanted to name coaches. Jon, Brian, Garrett, Sam. And Tony, who Ed almost forgot and then circled back to twice. "Tony definitely makes me feel like I'm 20 times stronger than I actually am," Devon says. "Which always makes my day."

The Honest Part

Devon will tell you she's been slacking lately. That she's known to fall off — do something for a month or two and then stop. That she's deliberately not setting big goals right now because of it, and is just trying to train consistently and see where it goes.

She said this in an interview recorded two days after her most recent class, in a year where she's already set 47 personal records.

That gap between how consistent people actually are and how consistent they feel is one of the most common things we see here. She hits the reserve button and then genuinely tries to make it. If she can't, she'll find something else to do, though she'll tell you it's never as good.

Four hundred and seventy-eight sign-ins. Someone who falls off doesn't do that.

If You're The One Being Invited

There's a decent chance you're reading this because somebody sent it to you. A brother. A friend. A dad. Somebody who's been trying to get you in here for a while.

If the thing holding you back is that CrossFit sounds like too much, Devon has already answered you.

And if you're worried it's too late, or you've been out too long — Ed was gone eight years and started back with a 24-hour Hero workout. Devon was gone 1,517 days and came back because her dad asked her to.

Neither of them was ready. Both of them came anyway.

Let someone bring you in. Book a free No Sweat Intro →

"This place has had a huge impact on my happiness. I love coming here and I can't imagine not coming here." — Devon

"I've met a lot of great people and everyone's so inviting and friendly. I used to not be as social before coming to the gym." — Ed

It's so cool that these two met each other here at Prototype and are now going into the next phase of their life.

We're into Day 73 of 100 in 100, and these stories are work for me, but it's things like this that give me energy and reflection on what we are building and have built at Prototype.

I was talking with Devon and Ed a bit about how they're not the first to meet and get married here at Prototype, but this made me think about that "what if" question... what if the gym never opened? I think about these two as an easy example... well, they would never have met. That's really cool.

I know this is a note about Devon and Ed, but I'm using it to reflect on year 14 at Prototype... it's cool this place means so much to people, and that you can find your people here.

And it doesn't bother me at all that Devon didn't want Ed to propose to her here.... my wife wouldn't have wanted that either : )

Congrats to these two, I'm so happy for you!

This story was developed through a recorded video interview and shaped with the help of AI writing tools. The facts, quotes, and experiences are Devon's and Ed's own — AI helped organize and present them in a format worthy of the story they've lived.