Ashley Sodano was visiting her friend’s beach house in Calabria, in southwest Italy, when she decided to approach the cute lifeguard on duty, Luigi Vorraro. “He spoke not a single word of English at the time, but thankfully, I understand Italian,” Ashley says.

They ended up dating long-distance for two years before he moved to the States in 2016. A year after that, he got down on one knee on the Brooklyn Bridge, since it was the first attraction they visited on his first trip to the city.