Column by Breanna Sill, Features Editor

For my final column as Features Editor I am going to share one of my favorite celebrity encounters.

In 2012, I was in Nashville, Tenn., for CMA Music Festival week once again and that year, the CMT Awards were held during the same week also and they had a special celebrity host that year.

This was right after Kristen Bell had appeared on “The Ellen Degeneres Show” and exposed her love of sloths to the entire world. If you haven’t seen the YouTube video of it, I highly recommend it.

Anyway, so who doesn’t love Kristen Bell? She is hilarious and is the voice of the narrator on “Gossip Girl” so to me, she felt like an old friend.

My friends and I had already declared it our mission for the week to meet her. So it was a really exciting thing when we got on Twitter and saw someone had tweeted about seeing Kristen at the airport in Los Angeles. So immediately we got in the car and drove to Nashville’s airport in hopes to catch a glimpse of her.

On the way to the airport we stopped at Cracker Barrel and picked up the perfect gift for her: a sloth stuffed animal.

When we got to the airport we found which gate her flight would be coming in at and decided to wait. We were far from the only people waiting for her arrival; there were actual paparazzi there, as well.

When she walked through the airport we saw her immediately because she is a small person and her husband Dax Shepard who was with her is very, very tall. They were easy to spot.

As soon as she walked through the final security gate she and Dax went over to the Starbucks that is immediately outside the gate and we didn’t want to ambush them by any means.

So we waited patiently for them to get their coffee.

Once they were finished they walked right past us, and obviously knew we were waiting for them. A friend of mine called Kristen’s name and the couple pretty blatantly ignored us. 

After that, we were pretty upset, but in one final effort to meet the star another friend yelled “Kristen, we have a sloth for you,” and instantly she turned around and headed our way.

When we gave her the sloth stuffed animal we could tell she seemed appreciative and took pictures with all of us.

Dax even came over and introduced himself and took pictures with all of us, as well.

When they asked us how we knew they were going to be flying into the airport that day, they seemed pretty surprised that we had found it out via Twitter.

It wasn’t until later that I read somewhere how private the couple is and how they are against having their personal lives anywhere in the social media or media world.

Every year since then, Kristen has seemed to remember me when she sees me seat filling at the CMT Awards.

And even better, I got to hear Gossip Girl say “You know you love me. XOXO, Gossip Girl,” in real life.