He saw her in Yellowstone and thought, ‘I’m going to marry that girl.’ And he did

American hiker Andrew McGowan and Taiwanese student Shallen Yu spent one glorious day together eating ice cream, star gazing and bonding over peach cobbler in Yellowstone National Park in the summer of 2013. They were determined to be together against the odds. (Courtesy Shallen and Andrew McGowan via CNN Newsource)

The moment Andrew McGowan and Shallen Yu met eyes through a storefront window, it felt like something passed between them. Andrew was sure his life was about to change.

“I saw her through the window and I was like, ‘I’m going to marry that girl,’” Andrew tells CNN Travel today.

Andrew and Shallen were strangers. They’d never spoken before. They were from different worlds.

But against the odds, Andrew was right.

A stroke of fate on a fishing trip

It was the summer of 2013 and twentysomething college student Andrew was on vacation in Yellowstone National Park, known for its incredible wildlife, volcanic landscapes and beautiful views.

Vacationing with his entire extended family — siblings and their partners, nieces and nephews, parents, aunts and uncles — Andrew’s main goal for the weekend was to avoid any complicated family dynamics and focus on catching a fish or two.

“My parents described it as a family reunion,” says Andrew. “I was mostly just there to go fishing with my brother.”

The McGowan family hailed from Utah and usually headed to Yellowstone for a camping weekend every few years or so.

Andrew and his brother always spent their time in Yellowstone fishing for trout.

“We grew up fishing,” says Andrew. “What was unique about this trip in particular was that my family had never camped at the Canyon area of Yellowstone before. We just happened to camp there that year, and Shallen was working in the Canyon village right next to our campground.”

Andrew grew up in a conservative small town in Utah as one of seven siblings, part of a large Mormon family.

In the summer of 2013, Andrew had just returned from two years in the Philippines on missionary service — a typical rite of passage for young Mormons who volunteer to spend time away spreading the teachings of the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints.

But while he was away, some of Andrew’s family had begun to question Mormon doctrine, with his parents eventually deciding to leave the church.

“My parents were these really conservative Mormons, all my life, growing up,” Andrew recalls today. “Then they moved away from it. They left it, went completely the other way.”

For Andrew, this was discombobulating. Even though he no longer shared a belief system with his family, they remained close. And so the McGowans decamped to Yellowstone for a weekend of hiking, grilling and family time.

While most of the family set up camp, Andrew and his brother went to the park’s nearest general store, to secure fishing licenses.

“And we went into the store that she happened to be working at,” recalls Andrew.

“She” was Shallen. A twentysomething student from Taiwan, working in Yellowstone for the summer, as part of a student summer working program.

Shallen, who was studying for a degree in geographic information, was thrilled at the idea of working in the national park for several weeks.

“I had never been there before. It was magical, it was beautiful,” she tells CNN Travel today.

For Shallen, the summer in the U.S. was a new experience — though she had spent time away from Taiwan before.

“I had never done anything like this specifically before but my mom would send me to summer camps in English speaking countries when I was a kid,” she recalls.

Before Andrew entered the store, he spotted Shallen through the window. He walked in determined to speak with her — even when it turned out she wasn’t in charge of selling the fishing licenses.

“She was working over at another counter,” Andrew recalls. “So I went and bought chocolate milk at her register that she was working at, so that I could talk to her.”

For Andrew it was something akin to love at first sight. For Shallen, it wasn’t quite that. But it was a memorable first interaction — a tall, blond guy bouncing up to her with a grin on his face.

“He’s smiling really big, and he looks like he froze,” Shallen recalls today, laughing.

The employees at the store all wore name tags, listing both their name and where they came from. Shallen’s badge said she was from Taiwan.

When Andrew spotted this, he decided to attempt to introduce himself in Mandarin. Andrew had a bit of a flair for languages; he’d picked up Tagalog while living in the Philippines, and dabbled in Mandarin as part of a college language requirement.

Still, Andrew had never attempted to flirt in Mandarin before. And what came out of his mouth was “really poor Mandarin,” recalls Shallen today, laughing.

“And then he left,” she says. “We had so many customers come in, I didn’t think much of it.”

While Shallen moved onto her next customer, Andrew sat in his brother’s car, debating what to do next. Fishing licenses secured, the brothers could move onto the focus point of their weekend away. But Andrew couldn’t stop thinking about Shallen.

“He was like, ‘Alright, we gotta go back.’ And I was like, ‘No, I gotta talk to that girl again,’” recalls Andrew.

“My brother had started the car, he was starting to back up, and I was like ‘No, I’m going for it.’ So, I got out the car while he was backing up.”

Leaving his brother baffled, Andrew ran back into the store. He met Shallen’s eyes, and she smiled.

“She saw me,” he recalls. “She was smiling really big, like she was waiting for me to say something.”

For a moment, Andrew and Shallen just stood there, smiling at each other. Not saying anything.

“Then I was like, ‘You got a boyfriend?’” recalls Andrew.

“He said this in Mandarin,” adds Shallen. “He was just straight out saying, ‘Do you have a boyfriend?’”

She shook her head and told him she was single.

Still speaking broken Mandarin, Andrew asked Shallen if he could take her out for dinner that night.

“And I go, ‘No,’ because we’re in the middle of nowhere, and dinner sounds so formal,” recalls Shallen. “I’m like, ‘This is weird.’”

But Shallen was intrigued by Andrew. “So I said, ‘Well, if you want to practice your Mandarin, we can grab ice cream,’” she recalls.

“My thought process at a time — it’s like, ‘I don’t know you, and I’m here in the States, all by myself. If we just sit in front of the store, there’s a lot of people watching over me.’ A lot of retired people come work in Yellowstone over the summer, and some of them, I could be their granddaughter… They can see me, I’ll be safe.”

“Okay. Deal,” said Andrew. “We’ll do it.’”

The two set the ice-cream date for two days later.

An ice-cream date

In the intervening days, Andrew and his brother enjoyed hours spent fishing, while Andrew daydreamed about his upcoming date with Shallen. He was so preoccupied that sun screen was the last thing on his mind and he ended up with some unpleasant sunburn after a hike to a fishing spot took longer than expected.

“The area we were fishing that trip was called Slough Creek and to this day it was the best trout fishing I’ve ever experienced, making the nine-mile hike worth it,” recalls Andrew.

On the day of his date, Andrew borrowed some clothes from his brother as his own “smelled like trail and sweat.” He did his best to hide his uneven tan lines and met up with Shallen outside her store.

The two said their hellos, slightly awkwardly, but both smiling just as widely as they had the day they met. Shallen gestured to the ice-cream store, which was attached to her workplace.

“And so we go over to this little rustic Western ice-cream shop, and we grabbed ice cream,” recalls Andrew.

“And then his sister saw us,” says Shallen.

“My sister was coming over to the general store to buy something, and she had her DSLR camera with her,” recalls Andrew. “So, I hear her yell… She’s like, “Drew!” She’s the only person in the world that can call me Drew…”

Andrew turned around, Shallen also looked over. And then Andrew’s sister snapped a series of “paparazzi photos.” In the pictures, Andrew and Shallen look surprised but happy. Andrew’s sister had captured the chemistry brewing between them.

Over scoops of Rocky Road and chocolate, Andrew and Shallen started opening up. Andrew’s stilted Mandarin only took them so far, so they switched into English. Shallen talked about what brought her to Yellowstone that summer. Andrew talked about his travels abroad. Shallen asked him how he ended up learning Mandarin.

“Shallen remembers that I high fived her on a couple things we talked about that we had in common but I can’t remember exactly what they were,” says Andrew.

There was an easy camaraderie between them right away.

Shallen says at this point it was “more bonding than flirting.”

But she felt “like I’ve known this person for a long time.”

A self-confessed introvert, Shallen usually took a while to open up to someone.

“But for him… I didn’t feel uncomfortable. We just talk and talk,” says Shallen.

“As for me, I like talking to new people, but I don’t really connect deeply with people very often,” says Andrew. “With her, it just clicked. It felt like a really good connection. I liked the way she talked about everything. I could tell that she was a really curious person.”

As the conversation turned to Yellowstone’s beauty, Andrew mentioned a spot called Artist Point, a cliffside viewing area.

“It wasn’t particularly scenic at the ice-cream store itself so we drove over to Artist Point, which is an incredible view,” he says.

Andrew drove them over there, in his brother’s truck. They talked the whole way. At Artist Point, the two stood side-by-side, surveying the view of the cascading waterfall, framed by red rocks, still deep in conversation.

“We talked about the beauty of Yellowstone,” says Andrew. “For me it was more commonplace since I grew up in the mountains and had been to Yellowstone multiple times but I remember being impressed and enthralled with how much Shallen appreciated it.”

Then, their conversation was disrupted by a a passing family, who asked Andrew and Shallen if they’d take a photo of them.

The family turned out to be from the Philippines.

“We ended up speaking Tagalog with each other for a bit,” recalls Andrew. “They then offered to take a picture of us, which I thought would be a little odd since it was our first date, but Shallen was very chill and said okay. I’m glad she was chill and said yes because now we have that picture of our first date.”

Picture taken, Shallen and Andrew turned their attention back to each other.

“We were having a really good conversation. I don’t think either of us wanted it to be over. And then my sister texted me and said that my family was making peach cobbler,” recalls Andrew.

Without overthinking, Andrew asked Shallen if she’d like to join the family get-together.

“I didn’t know what peach cobbler is, and I’m a sweet tooth. And he explained. I was like, ‘Of course, I’m gonna come,’” says Shallen. “And all I think about is the dessert. I didn’t think about I will meet his entire family.”

“So she met my family on the first date,” says Andrew.

In the moment, his priority was just continuing the connection with Shallen. But he had no qualms about introducing his ice cream date to his loved ones.

“I have a really warm family, and my mom was smitten with her, right away,” says Andrew.

Looking back, Shallen suggests part of this enthusiasm was Andrew’s mother hoping her Mormon son would “meet someone that’s outside of the church and then just pull him out.”

“She also just liked you,” says Andrew to Shallen today.

In between bites of peach cobbler, Andrew’s siblings and extended family welcomed Shallen into an environment Andrew describes as “chaotic but always warm.”

“My sister had brought her dogs and my nephew was chasing them around the campsite. My little niece was 7 months old at the time and my sister-in-law or my sister was like ‘here, hold the baby,’ to Shallen,” recalls Andrew.

Shallen loved babies so she was unperturbed. She held her while Andrew’s family got the cobbler ready.

And later, when the McGowans posed for a family photo, they encouraged Shallen to join them in the shot.

For Shallen, the whole affair was a bit surreal. But she tried not to overthink it. She felt happy, relaxed and welcomed. “I’m just having the best time,” she recalls thinking.

She also felt like she’d never experienced an evening quite like this back home in Taiwan.

“My family is very traditional and very protective,” Shallen explains. “They will never let me do anything like this. Even though I’m already an adult, but in Taiwan, a lot of times it’s like, ‘Oh, you’re in your 20s, you’re still a kid.’”

But that evening, Shallen felt a sense of freedom. “I can do things that I choose to do, and I’m having this great connection with the guy I just met,” she recalls thinking.

As the night wound to a close, Andrew’s family retreated to their tents to sleep. But Andrew and Shallen stayed up by the campfire, chatting. “We ended up just staying out and talking,” says Andrew. “We took my brother-in-law’s truck, and we went stargazing for a bit.”

“So our first date, it was like, six, seven hours long,” says Shallen.

“It was more than that,” says Andrew. “We stayed out until 2 a.m.”

The next day, Andrew was set to leave Yellowstone. He and Shallen exchanged phone numbers before he left.

And while they’d both had a great time — an incredible time — Shallen says she wasn’t thinking “too much of it.”

“Because I was like, ‘Well, at the end of my job, I’m going to go back to Taiwan, you’re going to stay here,’” she says. “I hadn’t thought that it’s going to go anywhere. But he came up again in August for a camping trip.”

“I came up to see her,” says Andrew.

On this trip, Shallen introduced Andrew to her gang of Yellowstone work friends, and the group enjoyed a campfire and evening swim in the park’s Firehole River.

“We were jumping in and having a really good time. It was really fun,” says Shallen.

Shallen and Andrew felt an even stronger bond on this second visit. “We had more connection,” Shallen says. “And my friends all liked him.”

A few weeks later, Shallen returned the favor and visited Utah to meet Andrew’s friends — who couldn’t quite believe she was real.

“His friends, they thought he was lying,” she says, laughing. “Like, ‘How do you meet someone in Yellowstone, just like that?’”

“They all liked her,” says Andrew. “They all thought she was hilarious.”

But then, just like that, summer was over.

A trip to Taiwan

Andrew and Shallen were both in their early 20s. Still at college. From opposite sides of the globe. It wasn’t obvious what their path forward could be.

“I was more like, ‘Let’s make this work.’ She was more like, ‘Let’s just see what happens,’” recalls Andrew.

It was the same sentiment — more or less. Andrew felt things deeply. When he was sure about something, he was sure about it. Shallen was more cautious. And she was sure her family back in Taiwan wouldn’t approve of the relationship.

“One part of me is like, if I go home, I know my family would have all the disapproval,” she says. “Which they actually did.”

But Shallen was falling for Andrew. She loved spending time with him, and loved the idea of a future with him, even if she wasn’t sure what it would look like. So, Shallen agreed, they should stay in touch.

“I went back to Taiwan, and we began our long-distance relationship,” says Shallen.

The two navigated the multi-hour time difference as best as they could, organizing video calls, sending instant messages.

“​​I would call her early in the morning as she was getting ready for bed,” recalls Andrew.

And for the next nine months, Andrew and Shallen communicated from afar. Meanwhile, Andrew started saving up “as much money as I could” to buy a plane ticket to Taiwan.

“I worked two jobs, as a carpenter for a friends’ construction company and then as a youth mentor at a boys home for kids that were in state custody,” he recalls.

In the summer of 2014, Andrew reunited with Shallen in Taiwan.

“I loved Taiwan because it’s this semi-tropical, verdant, agricultural paradise,” he says. “I grew up in a smaller town, farming, and I’ve always had this fascination with the green things of the world. Taiwan was just this beautiful island, so there was a lot of natural beauty there. And then because I grew up in a smaller town, I was really impressed with the cities, how they function… You can take public transport everywhere.”

Whenever Andrew and Shallen were together, eating out in Taipei or hiking in the countryside, things were easy. They also went to the Philippines for a little while, and Andrew showed Shallen where he’d lived. They felt closer than ever.

But Andrew’s interactions with Shallen’s family were more complicated. They made it clear that Andrew wasn’t what they’d envisaged for Shallen.

“My family’s standard is like, ‘Oh, did he graduate yet? Does he own his own house?’” says Shallen. “It’s very traditional East Asian culture. So, my mom’s like ‘Yeah, this would just be child’s play.’”

Andrew was intimidated by Shallen’s family of academic high achievers.

“Her mom is, like, this really accomplished person in the finance industry,” he says. “When we met, her mom was like, ‘Okay, I guess I’ll take you around.’ I think at that point she was like. ‘All right. I have to deal with this.’

“So, she takes me golfing, takes me to a driving range, and I’ve never golfed before…she’s trying to teach me. I think she thought I was pretty dumb or something, I don’t know, because I could not get it.”

When Andrew finally managed to hit a ball properly for the first time “it flew up over the fence, and it came down and it hit a golf cart.”

It turned out one of Shallen’s mother’s friends was in said golf cart.

“And they’re like this, this dumb American or this dumb foreigner hit my golf cart,” recalls Andrew.

While bonding with Shallen’s family was a little tricky, Shallen’s friends liked Andrew right away.

“Her friends always had fun because I really tried to learn Mandarin,” he recalls.

“You also have a gift of learning languages,” says Shallen to Andrew today. “I don’t think anyone could just pick up Mandarin like that. But he’s also very curious all that time. So, he had questions, and he’s funny, making all of us laugh… All my friends liked you.”

Post-vacation, in a quest to spend more time with Shallen, Andrew applied for a semester abroad studying Mandarin at Taipei Normal University’s Mandarin Training Center. He enrolled in January 2015.

“That’s when things became more serious,” says Shallen. “He moved in with me in my apartment.”

The couple started talking about marriage for the first time. They discussed the idea of Shallen moving to the U.S.

“And that’s when her family was like, ‘Absolutely not,’” recalls Andrew.

After many difficult and tense conversations, Shallen made the decision to disregard her parents’ pushback.

“We didn’t get my family’s approval,” she says. “So we just eloped.”

“We were like, ‘They’re not going to support us, but we have to do what we want and what makes us happy,’” says Andrew. “And so, we were like, ‘Yeah, we’re gonna get married anyways.’”

A new chapter together

In the summer of 2015, two years after they first met in Yellowstone, Andrew and Shallen eloped in the hills above the Utah town where Andrew grew up.

“The ceremony itself was really small,” says Andrew. “My closest friends helped me carry up tables for food and blankets for people to sit on. I think we had like 20 people there in total.”

While it was a special day, there were mixed emotions at play. Shallen was saddened by her family’s absence. Andrew’s family wasn’t there either, but they wholeheartedly supported his decision to marry Shallen. Shallen, meanwhile, felt conscious she was breaking from her family’s expectations. She was unsure what her relationship with them would look like in the future.

“I get really emotional when I talk about my family,” she says today.

But Shallen and Andrew were excited to start a new chapter together. And in time, Shallen’s family came round to her decision to marry Andrew.

“My mom was like, ‘Okay, my daughter is not coming back to me,’” recalls Shallen. “She went to this Chinese fortune teller… and got both our birthdays matched. And the guy actually told her, ‘They match really well. They’re going to have their differences. But they always work it out.’ And so because of the fortune teller, my mom’s like, ‘Okay, I guess that’s okay.’”

In 2016, a year after their elopement, Andrew and Shallen — who took Andrew’s name following her wedding, becoming Shallen McGowan — celebrated their marriage with a big party in Utah. Andrew’s family were all in attendance. And this time around, many of Shallen’s loved ones were present too.

“My mom, my brother, his wife, and their one-year-old baby; they flew here and two of my best friends came,” says Shallen.

During these celebrations, Shallen and Andrew referenced their first date in Yellowstone:

“The catering that we hired…” begins Andrew.

“… Half of it’s ice cream,” laughs Shallen.

This day also marked a moment of healing for Shallen and Andrew, as they spent the day celebrating with Shallen’s loved ones.

“Now her family’s come to terms with it, and they see how happy we are,” says Andrew. “And we also have really cute kids, like really cute kids, and so you know, you can’t complain about that.”

Andrew and Shallen welcomed their two children in 2017 and 2019. When their second child was born, they left Utah and moved to California.

Over time, Andrew also distanced himself from the Mormon religion he grew up with, before leaving the church altogether.

Moving to California allowed the couple to find a new community. “We’re in a very multicultural place, and so it’s better for both of us,” says Andrew.

“And better for our kids,” adds Shallen.

Their love of their children is a big unifier for Andrew and Shallen. “We said, ‘We’re going to have our family. It’s going to be us and our kids, and that’s going to be what matters the most to us,’” says Andrew.

When it comes to raising their children, and navigating life together, Shallen and Andrew pride themselves on working as a team. “We work things out, we try to see each other and see how we can help each other grow,” Shallen says.

From love at first sight to teamwork

While Andrew views the moment he saw Shallen as love at first sight, as fate intervening, he also stresses their romance is an active choice.

“I think in some ways the universe chose us for each other, but we did ultimately make the choice of each other,” he says. “And then we’ve made choices to respect and care about our relationship with each other and value that.”

The result, he says, is they’re very connected.

“I feel like she’s an extension of me, and I’m an extension of her,” he says. “And we’re able to work together.”

And whenever summer rolls around, the couple remember their first date. “When we eat ice cream, we definitely think about it,” says Shallen.

Shallen and Andrew also took their kids to Yellowstone a few years back.

“We told them, ‘This is where we first met,’” says Shallen. “It was very cute.”

While their children were too little to take in the significance of the moment, for Shallen and Andrew, it was special. They hiked to Artist Point, and looked over the waterfall and views, thinking of the hours-long first date, and of the moment they first spoke to one another in the general store.

“Walking in and seeing her, like I said for me it was love at first sight,” says Andrew. “I obviously couldn’t see where our journey would take us, and I couldn’t see where life was going to take us… but if I could go back, I would do it 100 times over. I mean, even with the difficult things, even with the hard things, 100 times over, I would do it again.”

By Francesca Street, CNN