With eight and a half hours to kill on a flight from Amsterdam to Kenya in March 2015, Martina Jones pulled out her GMAT booklet for a round of study. The study guide caught the attention of the passenger in front of her, Leslie Johnson, who struck up a conversation.
“His knees were facing up in the seat,” Jones, then 29, tells PEOPLE. “We talked for most of the flight. I just had that feeling. . . Let’s go on a date.’”
After exchanging phone numbers, the pair went their separate ways upon arrival, but bumped into each other at a seafood restaurant in Nairobi on the last day of Johnson’s trip.
“He allegedly went to the bathroom five times trying to get me to notice him,” Jones recalls.
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A few days later, while back in New Jersey, she texted Johnson, who lived right across the Hudson River in Manhattan. “I was like, ‘How’s the jet lag?'” Jones says.
After meeting for dinner at a South African restaurant a few weeks later, they realized they were both flying out of Newark Airport the next day and planned to meet.
“I have to say our second date was at the airport,” Jones, a senior marketing executive, says with a laugh.
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Over the next few months, the young couple fell in love while exploring the streets of New York and on trips to San Francisco or Delaware Beach.
By December 2016, Johnson proposed to Jones — in London — with the support of his extended family based in the UK. “Two cousins helped me put the whole plan together,” says Johnson. To do this, he recruited relatives – posing as tourists – to approach Jones at the Tower of London with roses and notes saying: “Will you marry me?”
I wanted to surprise her, Johnson recalls.
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Martin and Leslie Johnson.
Courtesy of Martin & Leslie Johnson
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The couple married in the bride’s hometown of Columbus, Ohio, in October 2017 — and honeymooned in Fiji, Australia and New Zealand. Now, after six years of marriage, world travel remains a cornerstone for the Atlanta couple, who share their travels together on Instagram (@thatcouplewhotravels).
“It really does a lot for your marriage,” says Johnson, now 42, who works as a product manager. “You have to learn to work together or just be with each other for so long.”
“I think there’s something special about discovering something new together,” adds Jones, head of marketing. “We do it over and over again. . . It’s like the honeymoon never ends.”
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Source: HIS Education