After months separated by the pandemic — and the whole of the Atlantic Ocean — these two men found their way back to one another.
Lee and Aerjay, surnames now Kingham-Italia, originally matched on Tinder at the end of 2019 while Aerjay was visiting friends in the UK on holiday. The two decided to meet up for dinner in Trafalgar Square in central London on New Year’s Day.
“We were chatting back and forth and he had asked me for a couple of restaurant recommendations,” Lee tells MyLondon. “After a few days, I suggested we try out one of the food places together. I got Aerjay to download the [what3words] app so we could find a place to meet up.”
Knowing the area would be swamped by New Year’s parade spectators, Lee had Aerjay download the what3words location app. The app maps the world out in 3mx3m squares, each with their own specific 3 word code.
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The code to their meeting spot, “///sage.trick.solved”, has become a special phrase binding the two together. So special, in fact, that both Lee and Aerjay have come to have it tattooed on them — Lee on his right leg, Aerjay on his left forearm.
But, just a few days after their first date, the holiday came to an end and Aerjay sadly had to fly back home to Calgary.
The two kept up chatting, and an opportunity for another face-to-face meeting arose soon after.
“As luck would have it, I was flying to Montreal just a month later for work,” Lee recounts. “I added on a two-week holiday to the trip to visit Aerjay in Calgary. Then, just two months after that, I was in Arizona, so I made a detour to Canada to see Aerjay.”
Lee says that the two never had that traditional define-the-relationship talk. After flying back and forth across the ocean for one another, it was pretty clear the relationship was serious.
Enter March 2020, the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic that sent the world into lockdown.
“When the pandemic hit, it put a stop to us seeing each other in person for a while,” Lee explains.
“It was a long time before I was able to get back to Canada, but the British rules were more relaxed, so Aerjay managed to visit four times in 2020 and early 2021.”
Through months of long distance talking and transatlantic visits, the couple had been serious long enough to know it was real. So, in September 2021, Lee packed up shop and moved to Canada so the pair could be together for good.
Just before moving over, he stopped at a tattoo parlor in Britain and got their special code inked on.
Finally united, Aerjay wasted no time and proposed to Lee later that same month in the Rocky Mountains.
By November, the two were ready for a small ceremony to formally tie the knot, and they have a larger ceremony planned next September — the anniversary of their engagement.
“We have family from different parts of the world coming to our wedding in the UK,” Aerjay says. “It’s there that we’ll be able to celebrate properly with everyone we love.
“We’ve included a what3words address on our wedding invites so everyone knows where to go. The venue is in the middle of nowhere, so it’ll be easy for people to get lost, but the location code will pinpoint exactly where they need to go.”
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