- Christine Cole is a 50-year-old in Maryland who met her now husband on an airplane 10 years ago.
- She and her husband Jesse were married nine months after meeting.
- They recently reflected on their relationship as they walked through the same airport where they met.
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Christine Cole. It has been edited for length and clarity.
Following the Christmas of 2014, I was heading back to Washington, D.C., after visiting my family in Idaho. I remember wanting to look cute for no particular reason for the trip home. I sat on the plane in my assigned seat, and this guy put his backpack in the overhead bin. He fumbled as he sat down next to me, accidentally elbowing me. He was overly apologetic, which turned into a conversation that lasted until my layover in Denver.
My first impression of him was what a good smile he had.
He openly shared about a lot that was going on in his life at the time, including finalizing a divorce. It seemed like a relief for him to have someone to talk to, to ask him questions.
A little voice inside me said that this was a good guy. Turns out I wasn’t wrong.
I gave him my business card
Before we got off the plane, I gave him my business card because I thought he could use a friend. As we waited to get off the plane, he asked where my next gate was, offering to walk with me through the airport to my gate. That’s what he did, and it didn’t feel at all weird to walk with this stranger through an airport.
Before going to our separate gates, I gave him a quick hug. He said he would reach out.
A couple of days later, I had an email from him reintroducing himself to make sure I had remembered him. I knew exactly who he was. He told me how he appreciated our conversation and how I had treated him with respect. He felt I had really listened to him. He wrote that he wanted to talk to me more but didn’t want to disrupt my life.
I remember thinking: “Oh you silly man. Don’t you know that I want my life to be disrupted?”
The first time we talked on the phone, we were on for 11 hours
I emailed him back, and we scheduled a time to talk on New Year’s evening. We talked for 11 hours, never running out of things to discuss. We decided to continue to get to know one another through texting, emailing, and messaging — that we wouldn’t talk on the phone again or flirt until his divorce was finalized. We wanted to build a friendship.
After his divorce was finalized in February 2014, he asked if we could video chat. When we did, he was at one of his favorite places on the Idaho Falls River. He asked me to be his girlfriend. I said yes.
Over the next weeks, we continued to get to know one another long-distance. I had fallen in love with him and wanted to marry him, something we were discussing at the time.
He proposed and I proposed back
When he visited me in March 2014, the first time seeing him since we’d first met, I introduced him to friends and family — everyone liked him. He just kept showing me who he was. By the end of that trip, we were engaged.
Not only did he propose to me, but I proposed back to him with a ring. That turned out to be really important to both of us. We both had an equal say in the relationship. It was the first time I felt on equal ground in a relationship.
He went back to his job, which involved lots of travel.
Three weeks later, he phoned to say he had been laid off — par for the course in contracted work. He could either stay where he was or visit me in between jobs. I told him to come to me.
While he was still with me, I got pneumonia. I was in hospital for nearly two weeks. Jesse rarely left the hospital, became a caretaker, and communicated with my parents twice daily. He showed his true colors.
I left the hospital with a PICC line, unable to walk on my own. If he hadn’t been there, I would have had to go into a rehabilitation center.
During this time, we started planning a life together. He looked for jobs and found one in Maryland. We got an apartment in Calvert County. I was still weak, so Jesse organized everything with the house move. I only had energy for work and getting healthy again.
We got married 9 months after meeting
We were married in September 2015, about nine months after meeting.
Ten years after meeting, we are still married. Everything he said about who he was in those early days was true. He had been totally honest.
We were just visiting my parents in Utah for Christmas. He was going on to work in Texas for a job while I headed back to Maryland. We were back at Denver airport again, 10 years later, walking through the same concourse together and remembering how special it felt when we first met and fell in love.
No marriage is perfect. We all have our ups and downs. We work hard to treat each other with respect and have discussions instead of fights. I know some people say you shouldn’t have to work on relationships. You absolutely should have to work at it, but I guess it doesn’t necessarily have to feel like work if it’s something you want to do.
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