Once upon a time (technically October 2000), on his way from his brother Glenn’s wedding to a four-week consulting assignment in Nashville, Rob took Southwest Airlines from Hartford to Nashville, with a connecting flight in Baltimore. Normally a die-hard window seat guy, Rob chose an aisle seat (thank you, Southwest, for the open seating policy) on the second leg of his flight so he could sit near the “cute boy” already in a window seat. That boy was Tim on his way home from a long-distance date in Washington, DC, with someone he had been chatting with for several months after meeting at a conference.

Back then, flights were often under-sold with empty middle seats, and you had to bring your own entertainment. In Rob’s case, it was a portable CD player. Hoping to strike up a conversation, Rob put his CD travel case down on the seat between them and began to slowly flip through his collection: ABBA, Alcazar, Anastasia, Backstreet Boys, Circuit Party Vol. 2, Global Groove 2K (with a shirtless, muscled circuit boy on the cover), Donna Summer’s Greatest Hits, and the soundtrack to The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, among others.

Tim had seen enough to know Rob was “family” and struck up a conversation about one of the CDs. The conversation flowed effortlessly to Rob’s reason for travelling to Nashville (100% travel gig after a recent breakup) and Tim’s reason for being in Baltimore (aforementioned unsuccessful long-distance date). While Tim was still processing the near disaster of his DC date, Rob was in a wedding state of mind and was smitten from the start. Now that he knew Tim was single, Rob wanted an excuse to see him again, so he asked Tim to show him around Nashville sometime in the next four weeks. Ever the Southern gentleman, Tim agreed. After deplaning in Nashville, Rob didn’t want to seem like he was coming on too strong, so he hid behind a column in the airport and watched as Tim passed by.

It took a few weeks to make the scheduling work, but Tim eventually met up with Rob in Nashville to play tour guide. During dinner at Sunset Grill, Tim mentioned how nice it was to talk to another gay man without having the pressure of dating… and a friendship was born. In case there was any doubt, this was an “un-date” as Tim called it. He’d had several experiences recently going out with people he thought were just friends only to be surprised to find out it was a date when they leaned in for a kiss. The evening ended without so much as a hug, and Tim drove home (an hour+ away) while Rob went back to his hotel alone, pondering whether anything could possibly come of a long-distance un-date. Besides, at age 32, Rob thought he was way too old for the 25-year-old.

Schedules prevented another in-person visit during Rob’s Nashville stay, but Tim and Rob continued their friendship over email and MSN Messenger and eventually late-night, international phone calls in the weeks that followed, as Rob went from Nashville to London to Cleveland, Ohio. The more they talked, the more they realized they had in common, and the stronger their connection grew. By early January 2021, they both agreed they had become something more than friends and decided to meet up again. Over MLK Day weekend, Rob flew from Cleveland to Nashville (with a gift bag containing a Westlife CD and matching boxer shorts printed with champagne flutes), and Tim drove an hour to pick him up at the airport, an hour home, and then repeated the roundtrip drive three days later. Sparks flew! While there wasn’t exactly a U-Haul, the visits continued nearly every weekend over the next year, with Rob flying to Tennessee or Tim making the occasional trip to Cleveland (thanks again to Southwest Airlines for their $35 one-way anniversary fares that year).

Rob eventually put his foot down with his employer about his perpetually-extending Cleveland consulting gig, and they agreed to hire him on permanently in one of their offices in a city of his choosing. After a little negotiation, Rob and Tim decided that Washington, DC, was the place to be, so they packed up the U-Haul (for real this time) in February 2002 and moved in together to pursue the next chapter of their happily ever after.