Two strangers met on the Eiffel Tower 35 years ago. Here’s how they ended up married

The Eiffel Tower is seen in an undated file image. (Flickr via Pexels)

It wasn’t an obvious day to climb the Eiffel Tower.

It was the end of November, 1989. Overcast and cold, with clouds obscuring the city.

Anita Hansen, then in her early 20s, was studying French at college in Denmark. The university had arranged for Anita and her fellow students to spend a couple of days in Paris.

It was definitely “not tourist season… dreary and cold and everything,” but Anita was unperturbed by the gray weather. She wanted to make the most of her time in Paris.

“The time that we had off — I felt the need to go out and explore,” she tells CNN Travel today.

On her first afternoon off from classes, Anita persuaded a classmate to head up the Eiffel Tower. The two arranged to meet there, but her friend never showed up.

“Of course, it’s before cell phones or anything like that,” she says.

With no way of contacting her friend, Anita debated whether to call it a day and head back to her accomodation. Then she glanced up at the soaring tower, emblematic of the romance and possibility of Paris.

“I thought, ‘I’m here. I’m just going to do it.‘”

So Anita started climbing the first set of stairs, then the second. She pulled her blue puffer jacket tighter around her as she ascended into the clouds, and it got progressively colder.

Eventually, she got to the last stretch of the tower, which visitors have to ascend via elevator.

The doors were just closing, but Anita spotted a gloved hand holding the door open for her.

She hopped in and smiled, gratefully, at the other people in the elevator. They smiled back at her — three guys, probably a similar age to Anita.

“One of them was Larry,” she says today. “So that’s where we met, on the elevator on the Eiffel Tower. That was the first time we saw each other.”

A serendipitous elevator ride

In November 1989, Larry Brown was a 21-year-old student at the University of California, Irvine.

Feeling a little burned out and uninspired by his classes, Larry had spontaneously decided to travel to Paris, where a good friend of his, Scott, was studying.

The goal, Larry tells CNN Travel today, was “removing myself” from the quotidian college life.

It was all a bit of a cliche, Larry admits, but he found himself thinking: “What am I doing exactly, and how can I make sure that I feel more connected to what I’m doing?‘”

That’s how Larry ended up in the elevator riding to the top of the Eiffel Tower, with Scott and another friend from California, Tino, in tow.

No one can quite remember who held the elevator for Anita. But Larry will never forget the moment she entered and he saw her for the first time.

It definitely wasn’t “love at first sight,” says Larry. But their eyes met, and they smiled at each other.

“I remember she was wearing a big, puffy blue jacket,” he recalls.

As for Anita, she thought all three of the guys were “really kind” to hold the elevator for her.

“That was nice of them, because, if not, I had to stand in the freezing cold and wait for the next one to come,” she says. “And we did exchange smiles, but we didn’t say anything because we didn’t know what language we all spoke — I might have assumed, maybe, that they were French.”

On the top of the Eiffel Tower, the panoramic views were still impressive, despite the clouds and the gray of the day.

Larry and Anita met eyes a few times as they circled the viewing platform.

“I’m a fairly reserved guy,” says Larry. “I don’t mind being the person talking now… but I certainly wasn’t that person at 21.”

Larry’s friend Scott was more outgoing, so as they stood picking out landmarks in the hazy Parisian skyline, Larry nudged Scott.

“I said, ‘Scott, you need to go talk to her,‘” recalls Larry.

He gestured at Anita, who stood out in her blue coat, on the other side of the platform.

Scott agreed.

“And so he instigated conversation, and we talked,” recalls Larry. “She was really friendly.”

All three guys, recalls Anita, were “easy to talk to.” In fact, once they started, they didn’t stop. The foursome admired the views together, talking about what brought them all to Paris, and kept talking as they started their descent back down.

“We took the elevator ride and walked down together,” recalls Anita.

At the bottom of the tower, they prepared to go their separate ways. But then the Americans mentioned that Tino, who was a musician, was performing a gig in an Irish pub the next day.

“You should come,” the three guys said to Anita. “Bring your friends.”

Anita promised to make it and persuade some of her classmates.

“And then the following day, I convinced four of my friends to join at this pub, and the guys were all happy that there were five Danish girls there,” recalls Anita, laughing.

It was a fun evening, and Larry and Anita found themselves standing side-by-side a couple of times, exchanging more words and more smiles.

The following day, Larry, Scott, Tino and Anita met up again “to be tourists together,” as Anita puts it. They met at the Sacre Coeur, the white-domed church that stands over the city’s Montmartre district, and then headed for lunch together.

The group ate at a restaurant called Le Consulat, a historic cafe in the center of Montmartre, with a bright red and green awning. Before they left, both Anita and Larry grabbed a postcard for their scrapbooks.

Later, Anita pasted the card into her journal, alongside a caption: “It was a cozy little restaurant where I ate omelet and onion soup with three newfound friends.”

She also kept her Eiffel Tower ticket, and stuck that on the same page. Unbeknownst to her, Larry did the same, and also sketched a simple, stick figure-style picture of the Eiffel Tower.

Both Anita and Larry knew they wanted to remember this time in Paris. But the future significance of the encounter wasn’t necessarily obvious, not back then.

“They were all really nice, and we had fun,” says Anita of the three American guys.

“We were all just being friendly,” says Larry.

The next day, Anita was leaving Paris, so she said goodbye to Larry, Tino and Scott on the Metro platform. Just as Anita was about to get on the train, Tino surprised her with a bouquet of flowers.

Anita thanked him, then turned to the group: “If you’re ever in Denmark, give me a call,” she said. Then she boarded the train, waving as the doors closed.

“She took off. And we watched her leave,” says Larry.

He recalls feeling suddenly and unexpectedly crushed.

“I thought, ‘Wow I’m really sad that she’s leaving…and wow, Tino got her flowers. Why didn’t I think about that?‘”

Larry was surprised by his feelings and by his disappointment. He realized he thought of Anita as more than a friend, that he’d felt there was maybe something else between them.

“That was not on my radar at all, in terms of finding a relationship,” he says today. “I always had hoped I would find someone, but I certainly wasn’t looking there.

“But I still remember that feeling…”

A Danish reunion

After Anita returned to Denmark, Larry continued traveling around Europe with Tino and Scott.

The three guys were all keen to stay in touch with Anita, and Larry, as the “writer of the group,” became the “designated postcard guy.” He sent Anita several dispatches from their travels, always signed on behalf of himself, Tino and Scott.

Then, around New Year’s Eve, the three guys decided to take Anita up on her offer and headed to Denmark.

They arrived in the first few days of 1990. Anita met them at Copenhagen train station, and then she took them to her parents’ home, an old farmhouse in the outskirts of the city.

“We had lots of room,” she says. “So we set them all up. And then at the time, my parents had a summer house on the coast, and so then the four of us also went out there, so they could see the coast.”

That first day on the coast, Larry turned 22. To celebrate his friend’s birthday, Tino cooked the group a Mexican meal — it was a cuisine that the three Southern Californian guys struggled to find in Europe, and food that Anita had never come across in 1980s Denmark.

“Larry’s birthday meal — it was amazing,” says Anita.

The evening was memorable not only because of the food.

“We stayed up that night,” recalls Larry. “Scott and Tino went to bed, and Anita and I… we talked all night, until four or five in the morning.”

The two shared stories of their childhoods growing up on opposite sides of the world, about Larry’s ambivalent feelings towards school, Anita’s hopes for the future. They both felt understood in a way they’d never quite experienced before.

“That’s when we were like, ‘I guess there is something here,‘” says Larry.

He’d sort of suspected it — earlier that evening, Scott had taken Larry aside and said, “I think Anita likes you, Larry.”

“I think I like her too,” was Larry’s reply. It wasn’t a new realization. He’d had the inkling ever since that moment at the Metro, when the train doors closed and he’d wondered if he’d ever see Anita again.

When Larry went back to his room in the summer house in the early hours of the morning, Scott and Tino both woke up, keen to quiz their friend about the details.

“I just said, ‘I guess we kind of like each other,‘” says Larry.

When Larry, Tino and Scott left Denmark, Anita kept thinking back on their visit.

“That was a really fun time,” she thought. “Those are three really nice guys… but that Larry guy, he’s especially nice.”

A Valentine’s Day visit

After Denmark, Larry, Tino and Scott carried on traveling — first to Ireland, then Italy. Eventually, Scott and Tino had to head back to California, but Larry decided to stay in Europe a little longer. He sent Anita a postcard, suggesting he could return to Denmark — just him, this time.

It was February 1990, and Larry arrived just before Valentine’s Day.

“Valentine’s Day now is celebrated in Denmark by the people who so choose. But it wasn’t a tradition there back then,” says Anita.

So when Larry surprised Anita with a gold bracelet, apparently as a Valentine’s Day gift, Anita “thought he was crazy.”

“I was like, ‘That is a huge, fancy gift. And I didn’t know the occasion, and he had to explain to me the whole thing about Valentine’s Day,‘” says Anita, laughing.

She was still a bit baffled, but touched. She put the bracelet on her wrist.

Over the next few days, Anita and Larry spent more long evenings talking together, sharing stories about their lives, hopes and dreams.

But they never said, “I love you.” They never promised the connection would go anywhere.

“We didn’t do that at all,” says Anita. “Because we knew that he was going back — and we were both in college.”

After the Denmark visit, Larry finally headed back to the US. Before he left, Anita suggested maybe she could come and visit him in California the following year, after she’d graduated.

Even the suggestion felt surreal. It was so far into the future, it was hard to believe it would actually happen.

“And I’d never been on a plane or anything before,” adds Anita.

Anita and Larry even discussed that the reunion could happen, “‘whether it’s the two of us or the four of us’ — meaning him and his girlfriend, me and my boyfriend,” says Anita.

They figured they could both have met someone else by then.

“So we left it on those terms that, ‘Hey, we’ll see a year from now. We could both each have a boyfriend and a girlfriend, but I’d like to go to California, so I’m planning to come one way or the other,‘” says Anita.

When Larry returned to the US, he told his father about meeting Anita. His dad raised an eyebrow, asking if Larry was going to marry her.

Larry knew a long-term future with someone who lived on the other side of the world was “highly unlikely.”

“But in my mind, I was like, ‘I’m going to be true to this, until whatever happens happens,‘” he says today. “I didn’t want to be like, ‘Oh, I gave up on it.‘”

As for Anita, she was “very much not in the frame of mind that I was going to have a relationship that was, what, four or 5,000 miles away.”

But she “enjoyed the connection” with Larry. Staying in touch was the natural choice. And so Larry and Anita started sending letters (“lots of letters”) They also spoke on the phone, “using all of Larry’s savings” on these expensive calls.

“Even though we hadn’t left it as boyfriend, girlfriend or whatever, in my head, I was committed in some way, for sure,” says Larry.

“We got to know each other better,” says Anita. “What was the longest letter? 22 pages, front and back…”

A decisive moment

February 1991 rolled around. Anita graduated, and as promised, she went straight to California.

And despite the anticipatory talk of potential other partners, Anita arrived solo. Larry greeted her, also single.

Anita spent two months in the US with Larry, who at that point was living in picturesque Newport Beach. Larry enjoyed showing Anita the California beach lifestyle. And the two traveled farther afield too.

“We went to the Grand Canyon, Highway 1, Carmel…To Mazatlan, Mexico, with Scott and his girlfriend — who became his wife — Doris,” recalls Larry.

“We visited them and Tino up in the Bay Area,” adds Anita. “It was during this trip that Larry and I decided to officially become a couple and committed to finding a way to make the relationship happen.”

Larry and Anita had some “pretty serious discussions,” as Larry recalls.

Anita remembers thinking: “We travel well together. We talk well together. We certainly like each other. But how do we actually have a regular everyday?”

Now that she’d graduated college, Anita had a job lined up in Luxembourg. Over the course of their time in the US together, the two decided Larry would come and live with Anita there for a while.

So he did, for several months. It was a wonderful period of their lives, and when Larry had to return to the US to finish college — he’d taken so much time off, he was at risk of being kicked out — he did so knowing he and Anita would do everything they could to make their connection last.

And so in early 1992, Anita left Luxembourg with several boxes of possessions, ready to start anew in California with Larry.

The two moved into an apartment on Laguna Beach, with views of palm tree-lined sandy beach on their doorstep.

It was a big, decisive step. But Anita and Larry’s future still felt a little uncertain.

“This was what we needed to do, because we wanted to be together, and he was stuck in California,” says Anita. “But I don’t think we had even had the conversation, ‘Should we stay forever here?’ We didn’t. But then the funny thing is, within two months, we were married.”

Anita and Larry hadn’t quite taken in — until it was almost too late — that Anita could only stay in the US for three months. When they realized her time in the US had an end date, the couple acted quickly.

Anita remembers thinking they needed to ensure “nobody’s ever going to take us apart ever again.”

And so Anita and Larry planned their wedding in just two weeks. The couple told Larry’s family on a Friday that they were getting married the following Monday, while Anita phoned her parents to fill them in.

Then Larry and Anita head to the cliffs of Carmel-by-the-Sea for an intimate wedding attended only by a justice of the peace, a photographer and two of Larry’s oldest friends.

“We didn’t want to do it traditionally,” says Larry. “We were by the ocean. It was really cool.”

“It was also very emotional,” says Anita. “They were giving me three months, and we said, ‘They can’t take us apart.’ And then we were married, and we said, ‘Now nobody can ever take us apart.‘”

A year later, in July 1993, Anita and Larry had a more traditional wedding celebration with all their friends and family in Denmark. While they loved the intimacy of their cliffside celebration, they also decided “we would really like to share this moment,” as Anita puts it.

It was a fun day, full of Danish traditions and partying until 4.a.m.

At one point, as Larry glanced around at his friends and family, who were dancing with Anita’s siblings and oldest friends, he reflected on how special it was that he could share this experience with his loved ones.

If he hadn’t met Anita, it was likely his parents would never have gone to Denmark, he thought.

“They certainly wouldn’t have been involved in a wedding and all the traditions,” Larry says today.

He realized that “in our own, obviously very small, way” his relationship with Anita was “bridging gaps.”

“Our situation ended up enriching so many people beyond us,” agrees Anita, who took Larry’s last name after they got married, becoming Anita Brown. “Our families have had opportunities to go beyond what might have been their comfort level.”

Anit and Larry’s wedding table was also adorned with miniature Eiffel Towers — a nod to their Parisian meeting.

Larry joked that it was “very, very unlikely that I would be the guy who meets someone on the Eiffel Tower.”

But Larry also found himself reflecting on how Anita had “opened up his mind,” on how meeting her had changed the course of his life.

Return to Paris

Larry and Anita lived in Laguna Beach for several years, before moving to a townhouse in Costa Mesa, in Orange County, California.

It was there that, 11 years into their marriage, Anita and Larry welcomed twins.

“We have a boy and a girl,” says Anita. “In December, they just turned 21.”

From the beginning, Anita and Larry encouraged their kids to embrace their Danish heritage.

“They got their first passports when they were seven months old, and they traveled their second time to Europe when they were a year and a half,” says Anita.

This started a tradition of regular summer trips to Denmark.

“This has given them a strong connection to their Danish family, their Danish roots, and they consider that their second home,” says Anita. “That was a very big priority for us.”

In 2012, on their 20th wedding anniversary, Anita and Larry took their children to Paris for the first time. The family all climbed the winding Eiffel Tower stairs together, and then got into the elevator where Larry and Anita first met eyes. At the top of the tower, the couple posed for a photo on the viewing platform, arm in arm.

Later that day, Anita and Larry returned to Le Consulat restaurant, where they shared that first memorable lunch together. Satisfyingly, the cafe looked exactly the same as it did back then, identical to the postcards they’d both pasted into their scrapbooks.

35 years together

Larry recently found himself flicking through his scrapbook from his 1989 travels. He and Anita live close to the areas of California that were recently devastated by wildfires, and Larry’s got two suitcases under the bed packed with his family’s most treasured belongings, just in case “God forbid, something happens.”

Larry made sure his scrapbook was inside one of the bags — but before he placed it in there, he searched for the page with his Eiffel Tower ticket, to relive his first meeting with Anita and reflect on their life together.

Today, Larry’s a teacher who has been teaching high schoolers for more than 25 years. And occasionally his romantic meet-cute comes up in lessons. His students are always incredulous.

“It’s gotta happen to someone,” Larry always jokes, admitting that meeting the love of your life on the Eiffel Tower is “a bit dramatic”

“But it was not love at first sight, even for myself,” he reflects, adding he’s thankful he and Anita became friends first.

“The whole relationship is built on a very strong friendship,” agrees Anita.

“But like I said, when she left on the Metro, I felt… I have never felt that way before,” says Larry.

This past November marked 35 years since Anita and Larry met on the Eiffel Tower, while this Valentine’s Day marks the anniversary of the moment they reunited in Denmark and admitted their feelings for one another.

“Thirty five years is a long time,” reflects Anita.

A lot has happened in that period, she says, both good and bad.

“Life happens. We have lost people — Scott, who introduced us, who was part of that…he died of cancer years ago. We lost him. We are still in touch with his wife, Doris, that we went to Mazatlan with. And Tino is living in South America, we lost touch with him many years ago.”

Those first few days in Paris, the spontaneous trip to Denmark, the early days of their relationship were “such a unique moment in time,” says Anita.

Anita and Larry’s children are now going out into the world, embarking on their own adventures. Meanwhile Anita and Larry are looking forward to a new chapter together, to the future.

“It’s a journey,” says Anita of their relationship, adding “the growth, the exploration” never stops. She’s forever proud, she says, to go on that journey with Larry.

“Look where we are now,” she reflects. “It’s amazing. Never underestimate encounters, right? Chance encounters. You never know what it’s going to turn into.”