She almost let the stranger walk out of her life for good. Then a royal bodyguard intervened

Carrin Schottler and Paul Thal were tourists separately exploring the Tower of London in 1994. The connection they made that day was so obvious that the Tower's Yeoman Warders encouraged Carrin to ask Paul out. Here's the couple pictured just after, on Tower Bridge. (Carrin Schottler-Thal via CNN Newsource)

The Beefeaters made her do it.

Carrin Schottler was trying to focus on the centuries of British history at the Tower of London. Imposing white stone towers. Impressive armour. Ravens circling turrets.

She was in a tour group with about a dozen people. The tour guide was talking, but Carrin kept losing focus: there was one guy in the group she couldn’t take her eyes off.

“I saw this really, very good-looking man. My heart skipped a beat…” Carrin tells CNN Travel today.

Ever since she’d noticed him, Carrin couldn’t stop stealing glances. She kept smiling at the stranger. She couldn’t help it.

Every time she looked over, she took in something new. She noticed his clothing: white shirt, oversized blazer and dress pants.

“He can’t be American,” thought Carrin, assessing the outfit. Even in Carrin’s native New York, twentysomething guys didn’t really dress like that.

Carrin was over from the US for a semester studying abroad in London. It was September 1994. Sept., 30, 1994, to be precise.

“That day, I was with a girlfriend, and we were either going to see Harrods for the first time, or we were going to go on a tour at the Tower of London for the first time,” recalls Carrin.

The Tower of London won out. The two friends were intrigued by the history. This stone fortress has been in the same spot on London’s riverbank since 1066 and has seen centuries of tumultuous events play out within its walls.

That day in 1994, Carrin shuffled around the stone buildings and through historic, cobblestone courtyards, hearing about kings and queens, riots and executions, and taking absolutely nothing in. Instead, she just looked for opportunities to meet eyes with the man in the blazer.

Eventually, Carrin found herself standing next to him. She looked up at him, smiling. He smiled back.

“And we then just start talking,” she recalls. “We ask where each other are from, and we just start chatting about our lives.”

Chemistry and connection

The stranger in the blazer introduced himself as Paul Thal, a 23-year-old study abroad student from Sweden. He was enrolled in a college in Manchester, in the north of England, and he’d come down to London for a weekend of sightseeing.

Paul noticed Carrin at the beginning of the Tower of London tour.

“I saw Carrin, scoped her out a little bit,” he tells CNN Travel today. “And then we started talking, and I thought it was just so nice. It just kind of built from there.”

As Carrin and Paul chatted, Carrin’s friend Heather kept meeting Carrin’s eye and suggestively raising an eyebrow. The chemistry and connection were obvious.

Heather also gave Paul an enthusiastic nod of encouragement on a couple of occasions, trying to move things along. Meanwhile, Paul was conscious he wanted to “be close, but not, like, creepy close” and was trying to strike that balance. He didn’t want to misinterpret friendly politeness for interest. Heather realized the would-be couple needed some cheerleading.

“She had no problem turning around and grinning at Paul, and making it obvious,” recalls Carrin, laughing.

And as it turned out, Carrin and Paul’s connection wasn’t just apparent to Heather.

The Tower of London is the base for some 35 serving Yeoman Warders, royal bodyguards known as “Beefeaters,” who act as the landmark’s ceremonial guardians. Besuited in red and blue with traditional hats, they cut a striking figure. The “Beefeater” name comes from the daily meat ration they were traditionally given, back in the day.

For Tower of London tourists, a photo with a grinning Beefeater is a must-have souvenir. And Carrin and Paul were no different. Towards the end of the tour, they both took turns posing between two of Yeoman Warders and getting that requisite snapshot.

As Carrin and Paul passed their film cameras between them, the Beefeaters joined in their laughter.

“They could tell there was a little connection,” recalls Carrin. “One of the Beefeaters said to me, ‘Oh, what a nicely dressed man. He looks very well dressed. What a very good-looking man he is.’”

Meanwhile, when it was Paul’s turn to pose between the two Yeoman Warders, the guards made a point of highlighting “this whole connection, about Carrin,” recalls Paul.

The older of the two men, “a guy with a white beard … was the instigator,” adds Paul. “He was kind of matching us up.”

“The Beefeaters acted as matchmakers,” agrees Carrin.

Buoyed by their encouragement, as the tour wound down, Carrin decided to be brave.

“It’s just one of those moments where you gotta do something here,” she says. “Because we were both not moving … So I took the first move.”

Carrin had been in London for a month or so at that point. Meanwhile, she knew Paul was just visiting for the weekend.

“So I said to him, ‘If you want to go out, I can show you around London a little bit.’”

Asking Paul out was more than a little daunting for 20-year-old Carrin. But she didn’t want the connection to slip by, unacknowledged.

“So, I was an independent woman and asked him out on a date,” she says. “It was really unusual for me to do such a thing. I’ve always been a very bookish, shy person.… Doing something like this was really out of character for me.

“But for some reason, I just thought, ‘I can’t let this opportunity go away. I have to do something.’ Something inside of me just said that, which probably was the best decision I think I ever made.”

And she’d barely got the words out before Paul enthusiastically agreed. The two walked, with Heather, across Tower Bridge. Heather took a photo of the two of them on the bridge.

Carrin left the Tower of London knowing next to nothing about the London landmark. Over thirty years later, she says she really doesn’t “remember a thing about the Tower of London.”

Other than, of course, meeting Paul and the Beefeater encouragement.

“I remember parts of the tour, I remember the Beefeaters and the kind of gruesome things that happened there,” says Paul, nodding to the Tower of London’s bloody history.

“But there was just a lot of … how can I say … like emotions in the air. And you were kind of more occupied by that, than all the historical significance of the different buildings.”

A date in Piccadilly Circus

Carrin and Paul arranged to meet that evening in Piccadilly Circus. Carrin waited for him underneath the illuminated billboard screens. Tourists and commuters bustled past her, circling the Shaftesbury Memorial Fountain, often interpreted as depicting Eros, the Greek god of love.

When Carrin saw Paul walking in her direction, she felt the rush of emotions from earlier return in full force. He was still wearing his blazer and shirt. Meanwhile she’d changed out of her “typical American” Tower Bridge attire of “jeans and a regular shirt” into her favorite outfit.

“I had a really nice short skirt and a nice top,” she recalls. “Back in the ‘90s, block heels were really in. So I wore these brown block heels that I had bought in London, because all the women were wearing them in London. I thought I looked just wonderful.”

Paul thought she looked wonderful too. They hugged hello, both smiling at each other. Paul gave Carrin a bouquet of flowers.

“We went to a cafe,” recalls Carrin. “And Paul, I don’t know if he was nervous, but he had five cups of coffee … I was so nervous too.”

But by the fifth cup, the nerves had melted away. And their easy camaraderie and connection from the Tower of London hadn’t gone anywhere. If anything, it was even more potent.

“We just hit it off, and conversation just kept going and going. We stayed up pretty much the whole night looking around London, and saw all the sights,” says Carrin. “We had our first kiss right near Buckingham Palace ….”

“…St James’s Park,” chimes in Paul.

“St James’s, yes,” says Carrin.

In the early hours of the morning, Paul accompanied Carrin home to her college dorm, near Regent’s Park.

“They have a rose garden right there, this beautiful rose garden,” says Carrin. “He dropped me off that night to my university, and said, ‘Goodbye.’”

Carrin always associates that moment, that night, with the smell of beautiful roses. Whenever she sees roses, she thinks about falling in love with Paul.

“It just brings me back to that time, right there, at Regent’s Park. So nice. A beautiful place.”

The two promised to meet again several hours later. They spent all day Saturday together, and all of Sunday, before Paul had to get his train back to Manchester.

At Euston Station, Paul and Carrin promised they would meet every weekend either in Manchester, London or somewhere else new to them both. They exchanged addresses, vowing to write in between visits.

Carrin returned to her dorm room in a daze.

“I called my mother and father that Monday,” recalls Carrin.

Her mother could detect something was going on right away.

“I told her, ‘I had the most wonderful weekend.’ And she goes, ‘Who did you meet?’… And I said, ‘I met this man from Sweden.’ … My parents were quite like ‘Whoa, what happened?’”

‘It just felt natural’

From there, Carrin and Paul were true to their word. That fall, they met every weekend.

“We went back and forth over the weekends, and we did trips together to different places in the U.K.,” says Paul.

He recalls a favourite trip to Edinburgh, Scotland, where the two hiked up Arthur’s Seat, the extinct volcano that overlooks the city, to admire the view and enjoy a picnic. They laughed together the whole way.

“You meet someone likeminded in temperament, and you don’t have to pretend,” says Paul. “You could just speak freely. It was not a courtship where you would have to put on some sort of pretense. It just felt natural, if I put it that way, from the outset. And then we were both in a place that neither of us really knew, and it was just fun to explore together.”

In November 1994, Carrin found herself feeling “homesick because I was missing our Thanksgiving.” So, Paul took it upon himself to track down a turkey and put together a Thanksgiving dinner for Carrin in his tiny dorm room in Salford, Manchester.

His room was inside an old townhouse, which he shared with several other guys.

“The turkey has to be in the oven for hours and hours. So I had it in there, and I told the guys, ‘I have to go and pick up Carrin from the train station. In an hour, can you take out the turkey?’ They were like, ‘Yeah sure, we’ll do it ….’ They didn’t do it. So the turkey was a shrunk, dried out thing. We had a Thanksgiving dinner in that little dorm room, put out a little cloth on the ground and we sat there and ate this very dry turkey.”

“I thought it was wonderful,” says Carrin. She was touched that Paul put in all this effort for her.

But, December was looming and Carrin’s return to the United States was imminent. Meanwhile, Paul was staying in the UK for another several months.

Before Carrin returned to New York, Paul invited her to go with him to Sweden. The pair traveled by ship from eastern England to Sweden’s second biggest city, Gothenburg.

“I went to meet his family and to see where Paul was from. We took the ferry from Harwich up to Gothenburg — because that’s where Paul’s from, Gothenburg — and I got to meet his family.”

“And despite that, she stayed with me,” says Paul.

Carrin bats off the joke. She loved Paul’s family right away. She immediately bonded with his mother, and enjoyed seeing Paul interacting with his loved ones.

“I get a little emotional,” she says, thinking back to this visit. “I think the time I knew I wanted to marry him was when I saw how kind he was to his grandmother. We met his grandmother and took her up for Christmas … he was so gentle, he took such good care of her. And I said, ‘That’s the man I want to marry.’”

The visit to Sweden strengthened their relationship, but now Carrin and Paul were at a crossroads. She was heading back to the United States to continue her studies there. Carrin planned to become a doctor, and her medical school training was long and hectic. Meanwhile, Paul was tied to college in the U.K. and Sweden.

“It was a little scary,” says Paul. “We really didn’t know what was going to happen.”

“I still remember lifting off from Gothenburg, and Paul stood out watching,” says Carrin. “I saw his red coat, and I saw Paul as I was lifting off … his red coat … and I was like, ‘I don’t know what’s going to happen to us.’”

“There was no grand plan for the future,” says Paul. “It was just a kind of hope.”

‘I don’t know if we’re ever going to see each other again’

Back home in New York, Carrin remembers “crying and crying and crying.”

“I don’t know if we’re ever going to see each other again,” she remembers thinking.

But a few months later. in April 1995, Paul visited Carrin in the United States and met her family. Then, that summer, during her college vacation, Carrin spent a month with Paul in Sweden. This travel pattern continued for some time.

“Between December ‘94 to October ‘96 we were doing back and forth as often as we could afford,” says Paul.

In between visits, the couple stayed in touch across the Atlantic. This was a pre-smart phone age, and Carrin and Paul had to get creative. So, they sent cassette tapes to each other — recording their thoughts, feelings and recounting their days.

“Phone bills were so expensive,” says Carrin. “So we would take these tiny little recorders with tiny little tapes, and we would tape each other and talk with each other, and then send those tapes overseas.”

In summer 1996, the couple travelled to Norway together, hiking through the spectacular scenery hand-in-hand.

“We were by — I don’t know if it was glacier — it was snowcapped. And that’s when we decided, in Norway, right by this waterfall …” begins Paul.

“… That’s when we decided we wanted to be married,” continues Carrin. “And in Swedish tradition, both people get rings. So we then decided we wanted to exchange rings. And then we announced to our families that we wanted to get married.”

During that time, a plan of sorts began to form — Paul would try and get a job in the United States. Although Carrin loved Sweden, her medical studies tied her to her homeland, while Paul’s IT ambitions were more flexible.

This plan, eventually, fell into place.

“In October ‘96 I moved over to the United States. I transferred over with a company,” says Paul. “I’d just graduated, I got a job, and I managed to convince them to send me over to New York.”

A new chapter together

Paul started working in New York City. And two years later, in July 1998, Carrin and Paul got married in Carrin’s hometown in upstate New York. Carrin incorporated Paul’s last name into her own, becoming Carrin Schottler-Thal.

Paul’s family flew in for the celebrations, as did many old friends from his military service days.

“My American girlfriends saw these handsome men, and they were so charmed,” laughs Carrin. “All these nice, charming Swedish men asked them to dance, which was so nice. So it was such a fun party, and we had such a great time.”

The soundtrack was a mix of classic American wedding fare, Swedish pop and British songs.

And when she was picking the flowers, Carrin thought back to the first evening with Paul, to the moment they said goodbye in Regent’s Park, amid the roses.

“So I had a bouquet full of yellow roses, because I remember from Regent’s Park these beautiful yellow roses,” she says.

There were several other nods to Carrin and Paul’s London meeting. The tables weren’t numbered, for example. Instead, they were each named after different destinations in the UK where Carrin and Paul had traveled during their first three months together.

“My sister Tammy made a speech, and she talked all about how we met,” adds Carrin.

“Heather, the girl who was there on the tour, came to the wedding too. It was really, really cool to have everybody there.”

After the wedding, Carrin and Paul based themselves in Albany, in upstate New York. Paul commuted into New York City.

This period of their lives was a happy, but hectic, one. They were in the same place at last, but Paul’s job involved a lot of travel, while Carrin was busy training to be a doctor.

When Paul’s IT consultancy company went under — a consequence of the late ‘90s dotcom bubble implosion — it seemed like an opportunity to do something different. Paul decided to get another master’s degree.

Then, in September 2001, Paul turned 30 and the couple traveled to San Francisco to celebrate this new chapter of their lives.

“We were in San Francisco during Sept. 11,” says Carrin. “Some of his colleagues from his old job were lost during that time, in the World Trade Center. So it was a really rough time for us.”

In the subsequent months, grieving and in shock, Paul and Carrin decided, together, that Paul wouldn’t return to city working, post-graduation. They also didn’t want Paul’s future work to involve the same degree of travel. They wanted their life and work and family to be in Albany.

“He got his master’s, and now he’s had several jobs up here in Albany, and I did my residency, and I’ve been a doctor up here, and Paul has been working up here, and we’ve been able to stay together up here,” says Carrin.

Today, Carrin and Paul still live in Albany, now with their 16-year-old son.

They’re a close knit trio.

“We just love being together. We’re very, very close,” says Paul. “My son, if I’m having a rough day or something, he knows before I know.”

The family have also spent a lot of time in Sweden over the years.

“Our son has been there many, many times,” says Paul. “And we kind of blend Swedish and US traditions, the things that we really value from our childhood and the things we carry with us, right from home.”

During the holidays, for example, the family celebrates Swedish Christmas on December 24, and American Christmas on the 25th.

“So our son is very lucky, because he gets two Christmases for the price of one,” jokes Paul.

Carrin and Paul’s son is autistic and at school he communicates via an iPad using both Swedish and English words.

“Which is really wonderful,” says Carrin. “When he wants to be calm, he says the Swedish word and his aides say the Swedish word for calm: lugna. He understands Swedish and so we try to incorporate that into his life as well, which is really cool.”

‘Kind of magical’

A few years back, Carrin and Paul took their son to London to retrace the steps of their younger selves.

“We went to Piccadilly Circus and we had lunch,” says Carrin. “And we did take him for a walk in the similar spots where we took the walk that night.”

The family didn’t make it to the Tower of London on that visit, but Carrin and Paul hope to return one day. They often wonder if the Beefeaters who spurred them on are still around.

“We thought they were so old, then, right?” says Paul.

But today, when they thumb through the photos pasted in a scrapbook, the couple realize the Yeoman Warder matchmakers probably weren’t quite as old as twentysomething Paul and Carrin assumed.

These guards might still be living at the Tower, and might be keen to hear how their meddling led to lasting love and connection.

“They changed our lives,” says Carrin.

“They were part of it,” agrees Paul. “When you think back on life, different things, a comment here and there can set off chain reactions.”

Looking back today on their early days together in London, Paul calls it a “special time.”

“For me, it was kind of magical,” agrees Carrin. “A magical time. I just love it being told. I think it’s just a sweet story that’s just really happy.”

The couple remain close with Heather, the friend who watched their love story begin.

“And we still have, up in our attic, all those boxes of tapes that we sent so long ago,” says Carrin.

That period of their lives was filled with “a lot of uncertainty, but yet it was just exciting,” says Paul.

“And there was a certain degree of calm around it,” he adds. “I don’t know how to explain it emotionally. It was warm, calm … I think of it as a very warm, calm and exciting time. And it just felt right.”

By Francesca Street, CNN