For their fourth date, in January 2019, Ana Lejava booked a commercial flight out of New York City; Nickolas Paul Calbos boarded a train from Germany. They met in Vienna and spent 24 hours together. At that early stage of the relationship, their trip was more exploratory than romantic: Did their connection justify this jet-setting?
“It didn’t make sense practically,” Mr. Calbos, 38, said. “But I knew Ana was special.”
The pair met in October 2018 at the White Cross Ball of New York City, a charity event held at the Metropolitan Club in Manhattan. After hitting it off, they became separated for the rest of the night. They reconnected days later through a mutual friend and went on their first date.
Ms. Lejava, who moved from Tbilisi, Georgia, to the United States in 2006 to study ballet at the now-closed Kirov Academy in Washington, said she felt a special kinship with Mr. Calbos, who also grew up abroad. He was raised in a military family and spent his formative years living in Athens.
“I had a hard time connecting with people, culturally and values-wise,” Ms. Lejava, 33, said. “With Nick, all these things came together.”
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The new relationship came with a hitch. Mr. Calbos, a military intelligence officer in the U.S. Army Reserve, was about to begin a yearlong work assignment in Wiesbaden, Germany, with the U.S. Army’s Europe headquarters.
Their third date culminated with a dramatic moment, when Ms. Lejava expressed her fears for a doomed future. “I wanted to make sure I wasn’t setting myself up for failure,” she said.
But neither was ready to say goodbye. They decided to continue their courtship, even if that meant traversing oceans, hence that fourth date in Austria. Their next rendezvous was a wedding in Charleston, S.C.; the sixth was in Paris. Many more transcontinental flights — primarily between Germany and New York — would follow.
“It was an investment financially, emotionally, time-wise,” Ms. Lejava said. “But at that moment, I feel like I was acting out of my gut, not out of my brain.”
Their time together, however brief, was meaningful, they both said.
“The first year was hard,” Mr. Calbos recalled. “But when you’re not on the traditional relationship timeline, not in the same place, not seeing each other all the time, it was always special when we did.”
In March 2020, Mr. Calbos returned to the United States. He was staying at Ms. Lejava’s apartment in Long Island City when Covid lockdowns began. Their dynamic shifted from seeing each other sparingly to quarantining together.
“I liked seeing how he handled situations under pressure,” Ms. Lejava said of watching him do his job so closely. One notable instance that came later on: when Mr. Calbos assisted in a massive effort to evacuate more than 56 Afghan refugees and resettle them in the United States after the fall of Kabul in 2021.
By late April 2020, Ms. Lejava and Mr. Calbos moved upstate to West Point, N.Y., where Mr. Calbos had graduated from the military academy in 2009 with a bachelor’s degree in international relations. That summer, they embarked on a nomadic journey that lasted more than a year. They traveled throughout New England; visited Mr. Calbos’s aunt in Florida; and spent several weeks in Georgia — the U.S. state, not Ms. Lejava’s homeland, though the couple did that too, along with a trip to Thessaloniki, Greece.
In the fall of 2021, Ms. Lejava, who earned a bachelor’s degree in political science and dance from Birmingham-Southern College, enrolled in graduate school at Georgetown to pursue a master’s degree from the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service. She received a degree in 2023.
Around the same time, Mr. Calbos accepted a job as a diplomat with the U.S. Department of State in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, which required him to move to East Africa in March 2023.
A month before, Mr. Calbos asked Ms. Lejava to accompany him to West Point for a weekend getaway. He told Ms. Lejava that he wanted to see the Hudson River one more time before he moved overseas. Mr. Calbos proposed at the Trophy Point overlook.
Although they would be apart once again — Mr. Calbos’s assignment would last a couple of years — separation was a much less daunting prospect. “Once I said ‘yes’ and we committed to life forever, and hopefully it’s a long life, there is no other option,” Ms. Lejava said. “We’re not going to do this long distance forever.”
The temporary sacrifice was worth it, they said. Both value the work their partner does in service to others and share mutual respect for how their professional lives come with a sense of mission.
Ms. Lejava currently works as policy associate at the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security.
The couple held a wedding celebration Oct. 13 at the Alaverdi Monastery in Alaverdi, Georgia, with Father Ioseb Gvinianidze, a member of the monastery, leading the ceremony. Around 250 guests, along with a group of Greek nuns, were in attendance. They were legally married March 7 by Madeline Plasencia, a clerk at the Manhattan Marriage Bureau.
Ms. Lejava and Mr. Calbos plan to settle in the coming months in Washington, where Mr. Calbos has been reassigned for the next couple of years.
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