After talking online for almost two years, Patrick Hagerty and Joseph Hughes arranged to meet in person at a London train station near Hughes’ residence.
“I saw him,” said Hagerty, 52, who traveled from his Philadelphia home to meet Hughes. “He looked at me. He had the biggest smile in the world. And I said, ‘OK, I’m done. This is it.’”
Hughes, 22, said he saw Hagerty also break into a smile.
“With the texting, I thought we were really good friends and there was potential but obviously with the distance, there was a little bit of doubt,” Hughes said. “But when we first met, I realized this was actually real and I wanted it to be real. I realized at that point I wanted to try more and more to make it work more than I did before.”
Hagerty noted the irony that he gave Hughes a tour of London. Prior to this July 2016 meeting, Hughes had not been to London since he was 10.
The couple rode the London Eye ferris wheel, where they described their sights as “a beautiful view of the city at night.” They then exchanged rings.
“I told him, This was a promise ring that when he was ready, that we would be married,” Hagerty said.
He proposed to Hughes last month, on Valentine’s Day. While the two plan to have a larger ceremony on April 7, 2018, they had a smaller civil ceremony this month so Hughes would not have difficulties traveling back and forth from the United Kingdom to the United States. Additionally, the couple had fears regarding President Trump.
“We were terrified that, six months down the road, [same-sex marriage] wasn’t going to be an option for us and we would have to really jump through hoops to get him to stay here [in the U.S.],” Hagerty said.
The smaller ceremony occurred March 17 with Judge Dan Anders officiating. The pair broadcast the wedding on Facebook Live so people from out of town could view it.
Hagerty said he knew he was going to marry Hughes as soon as he saw his online profile on Sept. 12, 2014 — a date engraved in their wedding rings.
“I messaged him telling him that he had the most beautiful eyes I have ever seen and we started chitchatting and about two and a half weeks into talking, I said, ‘I will marry you someday’ and he laughed. He said, ‘You know we’re 3,000 miles away. It’s never going to happen.’ But we kept talking.”
“How much time do you have?” Hughes said with a laugh when asked what he likes most about Hagerty.
“I like Patrick’s personality,” he added. “I like how he’s the type of person who can get along with pretty much everybody. You just get along with him instantly.”
As for romance advice, Hagerty now has some to share: He said people shouldn’t write off potential love interests just because they don’t have much in common.
“You don’t always have to have a lot in common with each other,” he said. “Being together, you find the commonalities with that person and a lot of times, you find new things that one or the other might not have liked before or might not have known about before that now you can do together.”
Meanwhile, Hughes said couples should endeavor to “talk about everything” and “take a leap of faith.”
“Take a chance and have a video chat,” Hughes said. “Take a chance and actually meet in person. Don’t try to see it as losing something because, either way, you gain something. You gain experience. You sometimes gain a person you love. Sometimes you gain a friend. And sometimes, you gain the bad experiences, which unfortunately you get in life, but it’s always good to take a chance. As scary as it is, just take the chance.”