Remember back to February 2020? How blissfully ignorant most of society was to what was looming just around the corner, the COVID-19 pandemic. One couple met on the popular dating app Hinge. They hit it off immediately and had two great dates.
Matt Robertson and Khani Le decided to do something spontaneous for their third date. They booked a trip to Costa Rica, but their timing couldn’t have been worse. Three days into their tropical vacation, the world shut down due to the coronavirus. They were stuck, but that’s what began their relationship, which is still going strong today.
Matt is a marketing executive, and Khani is a publicist. It was Matt’s idea to go on the trip to Guanacaste, Costa Rica.
“You only live once,” he remembers thinking, “What’s the worst that could happen?” Those are some famous last words.
Khani was game, even though some friends advised against it.
“I said yes, just throwing caution to the wind,” she recalls. “I was kind of like, 'Go with the flow and see what happens.'”
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They left on March 17, 2020. The first three days of the trip were idyllic. They drank cocktails and went zip-lining at their all-inclusive resort. Then things took a turn.
The day before they were scheduled to leave, they found out their flights had been canceled indefinitely. The coronavirus had shut down the world, including the borders to the United States. They would end up staying in Costa Rica for 79 days.
Their unique love story is being told by Netflix. The documentary-style film, Longest Third Date, drops on April 18, 2023. It utilizes footage shot mainly by Matt in Costa Rica and studio interviews with the couple.
“It was a crazy, surreal experience,” Matt said about their time there.
“You get real close real quick,” said Khani. “There was no hiding whatsoever.”
After 11 days, the resort where Matt and Khani were staying closed. They had to scramble to find Airbnbs for shelter. One of these ended up being a treehouse, which sounds kind of fun until you learn there are no walls, even for the bathroom.
Khani and Matt had little to do to pass the time.
“When you’re stuck together, there’s not much else to do but drink and [expletive],” Khani admitted. Being stuck in paradise was not as fun as one might think. “I was like, we have to get back home. It’s not fun anymore,” Khani says in the film.
The couple finally made it home to New York City in June. Khani immediately moved into Matt’s Hoboken, New Jersey, apartment. For their one-year anniversary, they adopted a French bulldog named Banks. The three now live happily together on the Lower East Side.
Matt’s advice for anyone considering a crazy third date is to go for it: “Do it! As long as those first two dates are good, do it.”
