When they first met Krystina Burton rolled her eyes at Gabriel Solberg.
Burton, 30, Los Angeles, was at JFK Airport waiting for a flight to return home in an empty terminal when Solberg, 34, plopped down next to her.
Gabriel Solberg had just returned from Europe and was exhausted after an overnight layover.
“This guy doesn’t have spatial awareness,” Burton recalls thinking.
He was so close to Krystina that she was able to read her ticket and saw that Gabriel had a seat next to her.
However, Solberg remembers things a little differently.
“That’s her perspective,” he said laughing. “When I went to that terminal, it was packed, it was full of people, and I just grabbed a chair that was empty. I only sat there for like five minutes.”
“I know that since we’re sitting next to each other, we must be in the same boarding group. But he’s already escaped, and he boarded the flight with a random group,” Burton said.
Burton said that when she got to her seat Solberg had already settled in and she wasn’t quick enough to get her headphones on.
“But I’m not fast enough, so he immediately engages me.”
And that’s when he won her over.
“Hey, weren’t you sitting next to me in the terminal?” he said, grinning.
“You were sitting next to me,” responded Burton, still smiling.
“I feel like the banter was immediate,” Burton recalls now. “As soon as I got on the plane and was getting to my seat, I feel like it just changed — there was no annoyance.”
It was then that the captain announced that due to delays the six-hour flight would not be taking off for a couple of hours and the two started chatting.
“We talked about everything,” recalls Solberg.
“Clearly, when we all first boarded, nobody knew each other. And then the guy fell asleep for the entire flight. And at the end of the flight, we were basically sitting on top of each other and this guy wakes up at the end of the flight, like ‘What’s going on here?'” recalls Solberg, laughing.
When the flight landed in LA Burton went to disembark and Solberg – headed to Seattle – said he would like to meet up when he gets back into town.
“I personally didn’t think it was gonna happen,” says Burton. “I knew we had some kind of connection because I could just feel it, but I was like, ‘Oh, sure, you’re going to just come back to LA and hang out with me? That’s going to happen.’ I just was not convinced.”
When Solberg returned to town they spent a weekend together fast forward a year later and now the two are engaged.
You can follow this cute couple too on their Instagram account @swirlthroughtheworld.
