Calum and Michele Gardner

It was in early 2003 that our paths began to cross with an increasingly frequent basis. We met at the office; we were both working at the UN World Food Programme (WFP), the UN’s humanitarian food agency, based in Rome, Italy. Rome was a great place to date. These included moonlit motorino (moped) tours of the city; classical concerts in ancient churches; dinners featuring full-bodied wines and delicious cheeses; weekend afternoons in the Italian countryside.

Our time together wasn’t without its interruptions though; only three months into our budding romance, the war in Iraq began and WFP launched one of its largest operations ever. Michelle was sent in as part of the emergency team, with only days to prepare for what would be a six month deployment. I followed a couple of months later (the first of several moves chasing the girl!!) so we joined up again in Baghdad rather than Rome. I expect we were one of the only American/British couples to be dating in Baghdad during the summer of 2003. Needless to say, our opportunities for actual dates at that time were rather limited, consisting of an occasional coffee in between meetings and dinners together when we managed to get rooms at the same hotel.

This pattern of moving to new countries with WFP continued for the next few years. Following the bombing of the UN compound in Baghdad in August 2003, we were both relocated to Jordan. A few months after that, Michelle’s assignment with the Iraq operation was finished and she headed back to Rome, and shortly thereafter onto Cote d’Ivoire and then Senegal. For the next few years, our relationship consisted of emails, phone calls and periodic vacations together, meeting up in places like the lavender fields of southern France, the Lake District of northern England (my home), and the souks of Morocco.

In 2006 our paths brought us both back to Rome, where Michelle remained for nearly two years before moving back to the US for a position with the UN in New York. Thus began another year of emails, phone calls and vacations together until, while in England celebrating my April 2009 birthday together, we got engaged.

The wedding was held in Michelle’s home town of Rutland, VT, we honeymooned in the Bahamas and at Machu Picchu in Peru, and we are now happily settled in the Upper West Side of Manhattan while continuing to work at the United Nations.