If yours is late, remember this story worthy of romantic comedies.

It was September 2016. To end her vacation in style, Andye was spending three days in Paris when she decided to jump aboard this wagon that would change her life forever. “I took the metro to go back to my friend’s house; that’s where he got on , ” Andye told CNN .

“He” is Steven, a 24-year-old student at the time. When he arrived in the car, it was already full of passengers. He stood while Andye sat, travel backpack on her knees and earphones in her ears.

Steven noticed her right away. “I found her very beautiful ,” he recalls. “We kept watching each other ,” she recalls. He turned to look at me and I looked away, and we went on like that for a good quarter of an hour.

As the subway sped under the streets of the capital, Steven thought of a polite way to start a conversation with “the girl with the backpack” , as he likes to call her. During this time, she gradually became aware of her budding interest in this “unknown”: “And if it was my husband without me ever being able to know it? she wondered then. I will surely have to get off this subway and never see him again… When our eyes finally met and neither of us turned him away, I saw his lips move. So I took off one of my headphones. Steven suggested that she move her backpack to the empty seat next to her. The conversation was on.

A real version of “Emily in Paris”

They continued to date until Andye had to return to Amsterdam to graduate. Once the sesame in her pocket, they saw each other one last time in Paris before she left for the United States for good. Andye boarded the plane with no plans to return to Europe. She knew, however, that they loved each other : “We kept hoping to see each other again without knowing when that would be possible.”

The first months of a long-distance relationship were complicated, but they managed to hold on: three years later, on September 16, 2019, the couple got married in Washington. Today, Andye and Steven live in Florida and plan their future adventures together. “One of the symbolic things – and I don’t think he realizes this – is that when we travel he likes to ask me [if he can] carry my backpack,” Andye says.

When they recount their meeting to other people, some tell them that it looks like a fairy tale. Or, more in tune with the times: “With him, I feel like I’m living in a romantic comedy ,” she jokes.

Looking back, they continue to be amazed at the turn events have taken, as Andye explains: “There are days when I say to him: my God, I’m married to a stranger that I met in the metro in Paris! »

“What if I had been late that day, what would have happened? Steven asks himself. It was fate that brought us together.”