Heather Mae Peggs didn’t have high hopes going into her date with George Matthew Igoe in October 2022. She was coming off another setup from a dating app earlier that day — a lunch she described as “the worst date of her life.” She was also fresh off a seven-year relationship that she thought would culminate in marriage and was starting to doubt whether she would ever find “the one.”
Mr. Igoe, who had spent most of his adult life single and had yet to be in a long-term relationship, was more optimistic. The two had matched on Hinge over a shared fixation with frequent flier miles and elite airline status. When they started messaging, Ms. Peggs happened to be on a mileage run — where she flew to Nashville and Indianapolis solely to rack up miles and maintain airline status. “I was so impressed,” he said. “I had never met anyone who had actually done one before.”
At the very least, he figured that if there were no sparks, they could “nerd out and talk points and miles.”
They met for drinks at Forman’s Whiskey Tavern in the Toluca Lake neighborhood of Los Angeles. Mr. Igoe, 44, lived in Studio City, and Ms. Peggs, 45, was renting an apartment in Los Feliz, about 20 minutes away.
The moment they saw each other inside the bar, sparks flew.
“I couldn’t believe how tall and handsome he was,” Ms. Peggs said. “I felt better about the night right away.”
“Heather was even better looking in person than her profile picture,” he said.
Over drinks, they delved into a conversation about their mutual love of travel and the thrill of earning and using points for their trips. Ms. Peggs told Mr. Igoe that she had grown up visiting Walt Disney World with her family and was such a fan that she had built a career selling Disney vacations. Mr. Igoe spoke about his love of baseball and devotion to the New York Mets.
Three hours later, he walked her to her car. As they waited for the light to change to cross to the parking lot, they locked lips. “We continued kissing until the light changed from green to red three more times,” Ms. Peggs said. “It was an electric moment.”
They met up again a few days later, this time at Grand Central Market in downtown Los Angeles.
As they held hands and wandered from stall to stall on a self-guided food tour, they paused to kiss at nearly every stop.
After that date, Ms. Peggs knew that Mr. Igoe was the “soul mate” she had long been searching for. “I took myself off the apps and canceled a few future dates after meeting George,” Ms. Peggs said. “I had never been so definitive before.”
Nine days after they met, she took Mr. Igoe to Disneyland, his first visit. Over a 10-hour day, they rode classics like Space Mountain, snapped pictures at every corner, and snacked on corn dogs, popcorn and ice cream.
Mr. Igoe knew that Ms. Peggs was “the one” a month into dating, when he didn’t think twice about asking her to accompany him to New York for his sister’s 50th birthday celebration. “Welcoming her into a family gathering was second nature,” he said.
Mr. Igoe, who grew up in Paramus, N.J., works as a freelance social media video editor. He holds a bachelor’s degree in information technology from Rutgers University and a master’s degree in television, radio and film from Syracuse University.
Ms. Peggs, who is from Wexford, Pa., works remotely as a travel agent for the Castle Bound Travel Company, which is based in Union Grove, N.C.
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Their romance grew through weekly movie nights, game nights with friends, frequent visits to Walt Disney World in Lake Buena Vista, Fla. (nine so far), as well as hours spent plotting travel hacks that eventually carried them to New Zealand and Montenegro. “I had never felt safer and happier in my life,” Ms. Peggs said.
At Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles last December, under a sky full of stars and surrounded by onlookers, Mr. Igoe knelt with a diamond ring and proposed — a moment Ms. Peggs said she was so overwhelmed by that she “blacked out.”
With plans for their weddings underway, Mr. Igoe started attending tapings of “The Price Is Right” at Haven Studios in Glendale, Calif., encouraged by a friend who had once won money on the game show. On his seventh taping, in February, the host Drew Carey called his name. Luck was with him: He won a boat. “I’m selling it to pay for our wedding,” he said.
Ms. Peggs, inspired by Mr. Igoe’s win, decided to try her hand at game show stardom and competed on “Let’s Make a Deal” in May. “Since George was paying for our wedding, I figured it was only fair if I tried to win us a honeymoon,” she said. To their elation, she won a trip around the world, valued at more than $75,000. Their escape, which will double as their honeymoon in mid-December, will take them to Fiji, New Zealand and Morocco, among other locales.
The couple continue to live separately but plan to move in together next year.
They were married Nov. 22, before 113 guests at the TWA Hotel at John F. Kennedy International Airport in Queens, N.Y. Joe Fulton, a close friend of the couple who was previously ordained through the Universal Life Church, officiated. Mr. Igoe and his groomsmen made their entrance to the ceremony by emerging from the vintage plane in the hotel’s lobby, and Ms. Peggs walked down the aisle to Kina Grannis’s rendition of “Can’t Help Falling in Love.”
In a nod to their passion for travel, the dinner tables were named after airports. And they served the same style of cake that John and Jacqueline Kennedy had at their 1953 wedding: a white cake with raspberry jam and buttercream, covered with white buttercream frosting.
The post Their Obsession With Travel Points Led to an Unexpected Spark appeared first on New York Times.
