Whereas attending reunion occasions for Hamilton School in upstate New York again in 2017, Preetha Nooyi and Rem Van Aiken Myers each discovered themselves on the identical Indian restaurant after a buddy arrange a double date. Rem—who was dwelling in San Francisco on the time—had simply ended a relationship, and Preetha—who was dwelling in Brooklyn—was bored with beginning one. Evidently, sparks didn’t fly that night.

Destiny had different plans although, and two years later, after Rem moved to New York Metropolis, he matched with Preetha on a courting app. “I used to be intrigued by the hanging similarity in our profiles,” he remembers. “I had written that I ‘loved harmonizing within the automobile on an extended drive,’ whereas Preetha’s profile stated, ‘singing on lengthy drives, additional factors in case you can hit the harmonies!’” Proper after they matched, Preetha swiped “sure.”

Rem and Preetha shortly started conversing over textual content, nevertheless it took the pair over a month to attach for a primary date in actual life. Lastly, on a chilly and dreary Wednesday in mid-November, they met up at a bar in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. “I cherished how simply we have been capable of talk and the way, on a primary date, we have been already capable of deal with critical matters,” Preetha says. As they fell into dialog, an preliminary glass of wine was a whole bottle—and a hefty serving to of poutine.

Although that they had attended the identical school in several years, they discovered that they have been each science majors, sang within the choir, knew lots of the identical classmates, and that Rem occurred to be in a fraternity that a lot of Preetha’s associates have been in. Nonetheless, Preetha wasn’t fully bought: She was leaving 4 days after their first date to journey for a month in India and Argentina and doubted that such a brand new connection would final whereas she was overseas.

Rem, nonetheless, wasn’t so simply dissuaded and took her out on two extra dates that week. First, to a karaoke bar the place they sang Bon Jovi, and the following night—the evening earlier than Preetha’s flight to India—to a shellfish restaurant in Brooklyn. He then made it some extent to bid her farewell in particular person the morning she left for India.

By some means, distance and time didn’t dampen the connection. Preetha and Rem made some extent to speak day-after-day whereas she was overseas. “It wasn’t till a month into our relationship after we found, throughout a name with the mutual buddy who organized our first assembly in 2017, that we had crossed paths all these years in the past,” Preetha explains. “He remembers me as arriving late to dinner, and I keep in mind him as, ‘the man who talked along with his arms.’ A buddy of ours taught us the phrase bashert, a Yiddish phrase for soulmate. It’s tacky, however our relationship has so many coincidences that we will’t assist however surprise if we could have discovered such an individual in one another.”