Meet the couple who are happily engaged despite living 8,697 miles apart

A beloved couple is putting their love to the test by getting engaged despite living 8,697 miles apart and on different continents.

Luke Bond, 22, proposed to Sarah Dorough, 21, last month after just a year of dating.

The smitten couple met online in December 2021 and FaceTimed daily before finally meeting in July 2022 when Luke, from New Zealand, took a 32-hour drive to Sarah’s home in Suffolk, Virginia.

Sarah then decided to return the favor and flew to Luke’s family for Christmas, where he popped the question.

The couple, both fitness instructors, are now getting married next year and have plans to move in together one day.

Sarah said: ‘Our relationship is exciting and adventurous. He is just funny, loving and affectionate.

“I love that he’s fun and friendly, we have very strong communication and interest in each other.

“The most important thing is to trust each other, especially when you are away from each other, there will always be little thoughts that may arise in each other’s heads.

“Luke and I never worry about what the other person is doing because we have that bond and trust.”

The couple met on Instagram in December 2021 after bonding over their mutual interest in fitness.

Sarah said: “She was asking me a few questions about fitness as she’s also doing personal training.”

“The next time he came up, I felt like I knew him, which made me feel a little more comfortable, but it also made me wonder about my faith and Christianity.

“He was more genuine and would ask about Bible verses and things like that.”

After dating long-distance for a few months, the couple finally met in July when Luke flew to the United States to see Sarah and officially ask her to be his girlfriend.

She said: ‘We talk twice a day and we talk for a long time and making it work with time zones is hard.

“We were already committed to each other from the call, so from there we thought that if we were going to go ahead and have a relationship, we need to meet in person since we don’t want to be together online.

‘When I met Luke in person, it almost felt like a dream.

“An experience I’ve never felt before, that first hug was something we’d been looking forward to for so long, so you can only imagine how exciting that moment was when we ran into each other and hugged.”

“To this day, that moment still amazes me.”

They both considered the 8,697 miles that separated them, but they couldn’t ignore their feelings for each other.

Later that year, Sarah flew to Wellington, New Zealand to spend Christmas with Luke and his family when the group went camping at Lake Taupo.

It was there that he got down on one knee after taking Sarah to a “special place” during a kayak trip.

Sarah said: “It was super exciting, this was something we had to figure out, whether we want to spend our lives together, we figured it out because we don’t want to keep traveling back and forth.”

“I knew it would come, but I wasn’t exactly sure on the day, it was really amazing, such a special moment.”

Sarah said her family hoped the couple would enter into a relationship and get engaged, adding they weren’t surprised.

She said: “I think everyone knew, since he came from the other side of the world to see me, most people knew he was coming.”

Marking the occasion on her Instagram account, where she has more than 100,000 followers, Sarah wrote: “I found my best friend forever.”

“I always prayed for a relationship like this. One who is healthy, happy and strong. Forever grateful to have waited for the right man because life is so much better with him.

‘Distance brings challenges, but we’ve gotten so close through it all. We left with a purpose knowing what our intentions were, to spend a future together.

‘This commitment is a mutual commitment. No matter what comes our way during the time we are apart, we are united. It’s going to be a journey, but a journey worth fighting for.

Luke also shared his own post which read: ‘Saying goodbye to you is never easier. Even though I’m in my “sad kid” feeling right now, it doesn’t change the fact that I’m so grateful.

‘Grateful to God, to you and for our time together, yes our time has been short on the long scale of things, but it’s all I needed to realize that you are the love of my life.

‘I can’t wait for the day when distance, different time zones and poor FaceTimes reception will no longer exist.

‘See you soon promised. (Ps, I feel great calling you my fiancé)’.

The next time the couple meet is in April, when Luke is planning a trip to the US to see Sarah and her family one more time.

Sarah said her and Luke’s relationship works very well because they trust each other and communicate, but it can be difficult from time to time.

She said: ‘We really struggle, but we also have some things we do to improve long distance, like having proper communication, prioritizing our calls and trusting each other, we really trust each other.

“Communication is important, making sure that you really understand and talk about what’s going on because you’re not there with the person a lot of the time, so you’re talking on a day-to-day basis about what’s going on and guiding each other.” those steps.