As flight attendants, Rich Henderson and Andrew Kothlow board planes every day — but one flight three years ago proved to be quite out of the ordinary.
Henderson was working a flight headed to Nashville, when a certain passenger caught his eye as he was boarding in Charlotte.
Henderson said he didn’t realize Kothlow was also a flight attendant until he saw the “crew” tag on his luggage.
“The guy I was working with kept telling me, ‘Go talk to that guy,’” Henderson recalled. “I thought he was cute but I hadn’t been flying very long so I didn’t know if I should but the guy kept egging me on.”
Luckily for Henderson, Kothlow was seated in an exit row.
“I did my typical exit-row briefing and made sure to give special attention to Andrew and started chatting with him a little, but I’m kind of awkward so my flirting wasn’t the best,” Henderson joked. Another coworker took over an additional section for beverage delivery to free up Henderson to chat with Kothlow.
“I had had a long week at work and was trying to get home and he kept flirting and coming back for conversation; he was almost waking me up each time,” Kothlow laughed. “He seemed cute and funny but wasn’t the best flirter, but he was really trying hard so I decided to give him my number.”
Kothlow, 34, jotted his number on the back of his boarding pass and invited Henderson, 28, to call him if he was ever in Nashville; Henderson called within the hour, having forgotten he had a layover in the city that night. The pair went to dinner and out to see the sights in Nashville that night and have been together since.
Henderson, originally from Boston, had been living in Washington, D.C., when the pair met, and Kothlow, from Kentucky, was in Nashville.
Their first year of dating included a lot of traveling.
“We would travel to different cities on weekends, depending on wherever we happened to be for work,” Kothlow said. “Neither of us were in the same city at the same time so it couldn’t be, ‘Hey, come to my house and we can hang out’; it was more, ‘I’ll be in St. Louis this weekend, do you want to meet me there?’ A lot of the first year was spent vacationing.”
“After a year of bouncing back and forth, we realized, Well, if we’ll fly across the country to hang out just for a day to see each other, we probably really like each other,” Henderson laughed. He eventually moved to Philadelphia and Kothlow crashed at his studio apartment for a few months before the pair decided to make it official with their own place.
They now live in South Philadelphia.
Last year, they started talking about taking the next step. The couple decided to take advantage of the lack of constraints same-sex couples have when it comes to engagement traditions, creating their own challenge: the Proposal Wars.
“There aren’t rules about how it’s supposed to be done and we decided we liked both aspects: planning an engagement and also being asked, so we both wanted to experience both sides of a proposal,” Kothlow said. “We decided to both plan separate engagements and whoever asked first, the other person would have 30 days to respond with their own proposal. I loved the process; it was a fun experience to see both sides of it.”
Kothlow ended up popping the question first. He invited Henderson to Nashville to meet up with friends and suggested a date, including a wine tasting and trip to Centennial Park, where they went the night of their first date. He proposed in front of a Parthenon replica at the park, and two friends — one who photographed the proposal and another who came toting champagne — popped out of the bushes right after.
“I was very impressed,” Henderson said. “Afterwards, we went out to a gay bar in Nashville and his friends threw us a surprise engagement party, which was a really nice celebration.”
A week later, the two had been flying and hadn’t gotten to see each other, so Henderson suggested they meet up and fly back to Philly together. When the plane touched down in Philadelphia, Henderson, with the help of his coworkers, made sure Kothlow was the last off the flight — and before he deplaned, Henderson knelt in the aisle and presented Kothlow a boarding pass on which he had written a proposal.
The pair will wed this fall at an airplane hangar in North Carolina.
Despite their common career, the couple said they also have a lot of distinct interests and personality traits, which help them strike a good balance in their relationship.
Kothlow said Henderson’s humanitarian nature is among his favorite qualities in his future husband.
“He’s the type of person who’s actively trying to better the world he lives in, which is a trait I really love about him. He doesn’t see a problem in the world that he can’t fix,” he said. “And his sense of humor is amazing; he’s hilarious.”
For Henderson, Kothlow’s work ethic and devotion to his loved ones stand out.
“One of the things I love most about Andrew is how dedicated and committed he is to anything he does,” he said. “He puts his heart and soul into everything, whether it’s work, family or friends. I’ve never seen anybody care so deeply about people he loves the way Andrew does.
“And he’s probably a close second to me with his sense of humor,” laughed Henderson.
“Oh, he’s got jokes,” Kothlow replied.