5 Charming Love Stories About How Real Couples Met

From Sleepless in Seattle to Notting Hill, Hollywood rom-coms continuously capture viewers’ hearts by telling romantic tales of dreamy first encounters that culminate in epic love stories. While these on-screen romances are primarily fictional, it’s completely possible for real couples to have movie-worthy meetings—and our Real Weddings are proof. Although our hundreds of published features each have a unique, fairy-tale-like narrative, we pulled together a roundup of 5 dreamy accounts of how real couples met for you to pore over.

Some of these pairs met by chance, feeling emboldened to strike up a conversation with a stranger in a public place. Others have mutual friends to thank for their first introduction, who set them up after deciding that they were the perfect match. In this list, you’ll also find romantic tales of couples who met when they were younger, fell out of touch, and reconnected years later before pursuing a relationship. Of course, stories of the modern meet-cute, dating apps, also unfold below.

To live vicariously through smitten couples’ accounts of how they first met, here are 25 heartwarming love stories that are guaranteed to give you butterflies.

1. Sabrina and Navin

Although Sabrina and Navin’s parents were friends for decades, the two of them rarely interacted with one another due to their five-year age gap. “I had always viewed him as a daunting older boy,” Sabrina admits. In 2019, however, after Sabrina attended the wedding of Navin’s sister, Navin slid into Sabrina’s DMs, thanking her for coming. “Initially perplexed, I assumed it to be a polite gesture, but Navin and I continued to message each other for the next month,” Sabrina continues.

Since Sabrina moved across the country from her hometown of Los Angeles—where Navin still lived at the time—to New York City, Navin fabricated a “business trip” in Manhattan as an excuse to visit her. They spent the entire day with one another, from taking a SoulCycle class to watching the sunset in Domino Park. “It was there that Navin professed his love for me, and I reciprocated with equal passion,” Sabrina recounts. For about a year, they tried their hand at long-distance dating until Sabrina relocated back to Los Angeles for a job. They married two years later.

2. Marissa and Herbert

Though Marissa and Herbert “Herb” went to rival high schools in Bethesda, Maryland, they didn’t cross paths with one another until they were enrolled in the same “joke class” at Tulane University. After taking the multiple-choice midterm exam, where every answer was “True,” Marissa went to the quiet section of the library to study for the rest of her midterms. That’s when she overheard someone—which she later realized was “that cute guy Herbie Schwat”—talking loudly on the phone about that exam.

That night, Marissa saw Herb at a party, so she decided to bring up his off-limits phone call. “I walked right up to Herb and called him out for talking in the quiet section,” Marissa recounts. It turns out, that was a great conversation starter. “We ended up talking most of the night,” she reflects. From there, the two of them were nearly inseparable. Months later, while they were in an official relationship, Herb admitted that the phone call in the library was fake, a ploy to get Marissa’s attention. “Clearly, it worked,” she says.

3. Mikaela and Andrew

On the VIP opening day of The Kooples sample sale in October 2015, Mikaela was tasked with welcoming each guest upon their arrival—and Andrew was one of them. “It was a tall, blonde, and blue-eyed gentleman, reminiscent of a real-life Ryan Gosling, who caught my attention,” Mikaela remembers. Besides the physical attraction—which Mikaela describes as “love at first sight”—the two discovered they shared similar backgrounds: Both of them were from Los Angeles and attended rival colleges. Before Andrew concluded his visit, he handed Mikaela his business card, which had his phone number scribbled in his handwriting. Eight years after that fateful encounter, the two of them said “I do.”

4. Sabine and Ray

To give her best friend a proper sendoff before moving away, Sabine planned a farewell brunch at an Italian restaurant in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, in her honor. At the gathering, Sabine took a seat right next to Ray, who claimed she was flirting with him the entire time. “After that brunch, my impression was that she either definitely liked me or was overly friendly,” Ray concludes. Regardless of her intention, he took a chance by asking Sabine out to a concert. “Over time, our love grew,” Sabine expresses. “Our love was a slow build for sure, but I always loved how Ray made me feel. He made me feel safe. He made me feel at home.”

5. Sophia and Alex

If it wasn’t for the keen awareness of a stranger, Sophia and Alex wouldn’t have met. The two of them were living in New York City when they happened to be at the same bar. “A stranger at the bar ended up introducing us when he noticed Alex looking at me,” Sophia recalls. “He literally went up to Alex and brought him over to me to talk to me.” It turns out, the stranger’s attempt at matchmaking was a success—Sophia and Alex got married a few years later in May 2022.