Martina and Leslie Johnson on their wedding day.Photo:Holly Ann Photography
Holly Ann Photography
With eight and a half hours to kill on a March 2015 flight from Amsterdam to Kenya, Martina Jones pulled out her GMAT book for a round of studying. The study guide caught the attention of the passenger in front of her, Leslie Johnson, who initiated a conversation.
“He had his knees in the seat turned around,” Jones, then 29, tells PEOPLE. “We talked most of the flight. I just had this feeling . . . We are going to date.’”
After exchanging phone numbers, the couple went their separate ways upon their arrival, but bumped into each other at a seafood restaurant in Nairobi on the last day of Johnson’s trip.
“Apparently he went to the bathroom five times trying to get me to notice him,” recalls Jones.
A few days later, while back in New Jersey, she texted Johnson, who lived directly across the Hudson River in Manhattan. “I was like, ‘How’s jet lag?’” says Jones.
After meeting for dinner at a South African restaurant weeks later, they realized they would both be flying out of Newark airport the following day and made plans to meet up.
“I have to say our second date was at the airport,” Jones, a senior marketing manager, says with a laugh.
Over the next several months, the young couple fell in love while exploring the streets of New York City and on trips to San Francisco or the Delaware beach.
By December 2016, Johnson proposed to Jones — in London — with support from his UK-based extended family. “I had two cousins help me put the whole plan together,” says Johnson. To pull it off, he enlisted relatives — posing as tourists — to approach Jones at the Tower of London with roses and notes that said: “Will you marry me?”
“I wanted to surprise her,” Johnson recalls.
Martina and Leslie Johnson.Courtesy Martina & Leslie Johnson
Courtesy Martina & Leslie Johnson
The couple wed in the bride’s hometown of Columbus, Ohio, in October 2017 — and they spent their honeymoon in Fiji, Australia and New Zealand. Now, after six years of marriage, globe-trotting remains a cornerstone for the Atlanta couple, who share their journeys 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 such a long time.”
“I think there’s something special about discovering something new together,” adds Jones, a marketing manager. “We’re doing that over and over . . . It’s like the honeymoon never ends.”
source: people.com
