Thirteen years ago, I flew from Atlanta to Las Vegas for a work conference. I thought I was going to learn how to build a business: strategies, contacts, maybe some motivation. I did not know I was walking into the room where I would meet the man I would eventually marry.
I was 25 and tired of dating men who looked good on paper but didn’t feel right in real life. From the outside, some of the men I dated seemed impressive: money, status, ambition, the kind of résumés many women are told to want. But something was always missing.
So when I received an invitation to a work conference for a direct-selling business I’d recently joined, I was more than willing to meet someone new.
I was ready to settle down and find my partner
Before the trip, I made changes that felt dramatic at the time. I cut off the locs I’d been growing for more than four years. I stopped dating. I changed the names of several men in my phone to “Do Not Answer.” I made a private vow to stop entertaining almost-right men while praying for the right one.
On the flight to Las Vegas, I couldn’t sleep, which almost never happens. I kept shifting in my seat, restless in a way I couldn’t explain. Eventually, I pulled out my cream-colored journal and jotted down everything I wanted in a husband.
Nine bullet points. Not a fantasy list — an honest reckoning with the kind of man I wanted to love, trust, and follow.
I met my husband while waiting in line at the conference
The next morning, I woke up late. One hour before the conference doors opened, I rushed downstairs in four-inch heels to find the line already wrapped around the corner.
Courtesy of Chantel Henry
The conference had attracted people from many countries, and the hallway was full of accents. One caught my attention: warm, rhythmic, unfamiliar. A man smiled at me, which was enough of an invitation to make an instant friend. I joined him in line, grateful for the rescue.
We made small talk, but then I looked up and saw another man standing nearby.
Tall. Handsome. A Caribbean rhythm in his voice. Something about him stopped me. It was an immediate knowing — the kind that sounds ridiculous when you say it out loud.
I was looking at my husband.
He was from Trinidad and Tobago and had only arrived in America three days earlier. This was his first time in the US. He wasn’t trying to impress me with what he had or who he knew. He was calm, sure of himself, and something about him made me feel safe.
We’ve since built a life together
The next day, after barely 24 hours, I said something that still shocks me.
“I don’t know where Trinidad is on the map,” I told him. “But I’ll follow you wherever you go.”
I meant it. Thirteen years later, I am married to him and raising our children in Trinidad and Tobago. I moved here because it felt like a beautiful place to raise my children.
They get to grow up climbing mango, coconut, and plum trees in our backyard, connected to nature in a way I didn’t experience growing up in inner-city Baltimore.
The hardest adjustment has been being far from my immediate family, but the peace and simplicity here have been worth it.
I went to Las Vegas looking for business advice. I left with a future I could never have planned for myself.
