Jana Ďoubalova was setting out on a hiking trip with a friend when she bumped into a stranger at Iceland's Reykjavík Airport in July 2017. The stranger, Chris Curnow, was heading out for his own sailing trip and scanning the crowds for his fellow crew members when his eyes landed on Jana instead.
Chris told The Guardian, "I was off to join a crew on a tall ship that was sailing to Greenland. I was looking out for crew members when I spotted Jana."
Chris was intrigued by Jana, and he tried to figure out a way to approach her. Like something out of a movie, he initially asked her if she was part of the crew team. Jana said no, but she was immediately interested in Chris, too.
She said, "I was happily single at the time, but as soon as we met I suddenly thought it might be worth reconsidering." And as luck — or maybe fate — would have it, they were both on the same now-delayed flight to Ísafjörður.
Jana and Chris started chatting, and it sounds like they had an immediate bond. Chris said, "I was immediately taken by her intelligence. We were smiling and laughing together. I was spellbound." Once they made it to Ísafjörður, Chris invited Jana and her friend to join him and his crewmates at a nearby pub.
Unfortunately, it didn't quite work out the way he wanted. "Due to the seating arrangement, I didn't get much chance to speak to her." They ended up sharing numbers but were unsure of overcoming the distance between them — literally. Jana lived in the Czech Republic, and Chris lived in Australia.
They quickly separated, and Chris headed out on his sailing trip while Jana and her friend went hiking. But happily, Jana spotted Chris' ship the day it returned. She explained to The Guardian, "We had been hiking when we spotted their ship. We thought they'd be in Greenland by then, but then we realised it was them."
Jana and Chris were able to meet up for a short while, and the next day Jana impulsively asked Chris if he wanted to visit her in Prague when his trip was finished. He accepted, but the two were stymied again. Jana ended up in Paris with her family at the same time Chris was in Prague to see her.
However, since they live in the age of smartphones and the internet, Jana and Chris were able to stay in touch. Three months after they met, Jana visited Chris in Australia. She said she had support, but people were also worried. "All my friends and family were supportive, but they also thought I was crazy."
But as they say, when it's meant to be, it's meant to be. Chris visited Jana the following March, and he even took classes so he could learn Czech. He proposed to her that summer, she accepted, and they kept up their long-distance romance while planning a wedding. However, Chris suffered a major accident in December, and that brought Jana to Australia quickly.
After he recovered, the two knew it was time to get married. And they did in November 2019. Now Jana and Chris live together in Australia, and (get ready) they're even expecting their first child together later this year.
Chris said that he always held on to the idea that he would meet someone. "For the previous 10 years, I had never managed to find a soulmate. I always believed in the hope of never knowing what was around the corner. Jana is incredible."
While long-distance relationships were once unthinkable for many, the advent of the internet and social media has made the once impossible quite realistic. Laura Stafford, who has studied long-distance relationships, told The Atlantic, "They're there, and we think they're on the increase."
And these days, it's not as big of a deal for whole marriages to be long-distance relationships. It's easier than ever for a couple to be together without physically being together. The Atlantic has reported that "the number of married Americans 18 and older who reported that they live apart from their spouse rose from roughly 2.7 million in 2000 to roughly 3.9 million in 2017."
While many agree that long-distance relationships have existed for quite some time, they also agree that advances such as email have helped make the romances last. Media scholar Jason Farman has noted, "The mundane information that we are able to exchange with each other is vitally important to [long-distance] relationships, and that gets lost a lot in letters of the past."
And while their story is definitely cinematic, Jana and Chris are also just part of a global trend. The Atlantic interviewed several couples about how being in a long-distance relationship works for them, and the publication got some fun responses back.
One person noted, "I can text, talk, and play games with my partner, who lives across the Atlantic Ocean, and it almost feels real," and another said, "If this was 150 years ago, I would have to wait, like, three months to get a letter from the Pony Express and by the time I got it, she might've died of cholera or something."
