He took her on a private plane for their first date

In 2010, Sallie Kuria moved from Kenya to Germany, eager for a fresh start and open to the unknown.

At 23, Sallie arrived in the quaint town of Eschbach, near Freiburg, in the Black Forest, to work as an au pair for a man who owned a company restoring vintage airplanes.

'I thought, ‘Let me give it a shot. It could change my life,’' Sallie recalls in an interview with Dinogo Travel today.

The family Sallie worked for lived in an apartment on the premises, right next to an airplane hangar where workers were busy restoring WWII-era fighter planes.

One of the employees was 22-year-old Klaus Müller.

Klaus noticed Sallie shortly after she arrived. He thought she was attractive, and soon learned through word of mouth that she worked for his boss.

Despite working in the same place, Sallie and Klaus only started talking when they both attended the same party.

At the party, the two of them spent the entire evening engrossed in conversation.

'We were eating and chatting until the night turned cold,' Sallie recalls.

They conversed in English, covering topics like family, faith, race – and of course, planes.

'Everything he talks about revolves around planes,' Sallie laughs.

As the party came to an end, Klaus escorted Sallie back to the hangar.

'That’s when I thought, ‘Yeah, he might be the one,’' Sallie reflects today.

A flight to remember

The next week, Klaus and Sallie’s boss asked him to pick her up from the train station.

Sallie didn’t enjoy driving in Germany, so if she wanted to meet friends in Freiburg, she had to bike to the station or rely on someone else for a ride.

Various people at the hangar had given her rides before, including Klaus, but their conversations had always been limited to small talk during the brief car ride.

After the party, both Sallie and Klaus were eager to continue getting to know each other better.

Before long, it became a regular thing – Klaus would drive Sallie to the train station and they’d talk the entire journey.

“Those little chats, they kept us intrigued and wanting to learn more about each other,” Klaus recalls.

One day, as they pulled up to the hangar, Klaus invited Sallie to join him for a flight. He had access to a Piper PA-12, a refurbished American three-seater from the late 1940s.

“When you're at an airfield with a plane and it's a sunny summer day, after work, it’s only natural to go for a flight,” Klaus explains.

Sallie decided to give it a shot.

By the following Saturday, they were in the plane, Klaus in the cockpit and Sallie seated behind him, ready for takeoff.

Before long, they were flying above the hangar, cutting through the clouds.

In mid-flight, Klaus asked if she was up for a trick. Hesitant but intrigued, Sallie agreed. While she wasn’t afraid of heights or flying, this was a completely new experience for her, and it left her feeling a bit uneasy.

Klaus dipped the plane briefly, before quickly pulling it back up, giving Sallie the sensation of weightlessness, like floating in zero gravity.

“I felt so numb with fear,” Sallie recalls, laughing at the memory.

“If you’d like, you can hold on to me,” Klaus had offered.

She wrapped her arms around him.

“That was a defining moment for me,” says Sallie.

Though she still felt the butterflies, they now fluttered for an entirely different reason.

A few days later, Sallie invited Klaus over for dinner as a thank you for the flight. She prepared traditional Kenyan dishes, including Mukimo with fried cabbage and beef.

After their meal, the two sat together on the balcony. It was then that Sallie noticed for the first time that Klaus had a large tattoo on his shoulder.

She had never considered dating someone with a bold tattoo like that and couldn’t help but wonder what her parents might think.

“By then, it was too late because I was already falling in love with him,” Sallie reflects. “For me, there was no turning back.”

The First Date

It was Sallie who took the initiative to suggest that she and Klaus go on their first official date.

One day, she found Klaus working on the plane in the hangar. Having become familiar with the aircraft he was restoring, she often found him nearby whenever she stopped by to chat.

Sallie asked Klaus if he’d like to go to the movies that evening, and he happily agreed.

Before long, the two of them were going out on regular dates.

“It was such an exciting time for both of us,” Klaus recalls. “She had just moved to a completely new place, not knowing anyone, and was still figuring things out. For me, it was a shift because up until then, airplanes had been my whole world.”

Sallie hadn’t planned on getting into a relationship so quickly after arriving in Germany, but she couldn’t deny the strong connection she felt with Klaus.

Sallie says she saw Klaus as not just a boyfriend, but also as her closest friend.

“From the very beginning, we both had this sense that we had found a soulmate,” Klaus says. He recalls telling his father during a father-son weekend that he had met someone truly special.

While Sallie mentioned to her friends that she was dating a German guy, she kept Klaus a secret from her family.

Nevertheless, she sent her family photos of herself and Klaus, enjoying time together or on weekend adventures. She suspected they’d figure out he was important to her, but she wasn’t ready to share the full story just yet.

Starting a life together

In the months that followed, Sallie and Klaus made the most of every moment together.

They spent countless evenings cooking in Klaus’ apartment, where Sallie encouraged him to break free from his usual student diet of spaghetti and beer, teaching him the recipes she’d grown up with.

About eight months into their relationship, Sallie decided to leave her au pair position and enroll in a German language course, which led to her and Klaus moving in together.

The transition to living together was effortless for them.

“We rarely had disagreements. We were just happy to be there for each other and enjoy each other's company,” Klaus recalls.

The couple shares that their decision to marry, shortly after moving in together, came just as naturally.

“We were deeply in love, and both of us were confident about what we wanted,” says Sallie.

Their relationship had been a private affair up until that point, and the couple decided they wanted their wedding to remain just as intimate.

They kept the news from their families—Sallie only told a friend in Kenya when she needed some documents sent over. On a cold January day in 2011, they boarded a night train from Freiburg to Copenhagen, then took another train to the Danish coast, followed by a ferry ride to the remote Ærø Island.

At the time, it was much simpler for foreign nationals to marry in Denmark than in Germany, and the couple were drawn to the adventure of tying the knot in such a picturesque and secluded location in the Baltic Sea.

“It’s a small, charming island,” Klaus recalls.

They laugh about the freezing cold and how Sallie managed to navigate the island in heels and her wedding dress while also trying to stay warm.

“We exchanged our vows—it was a moment of pure joy for us, we were truly happy,” recalls Sallie, who took Klaus' surname after the wedding and became Sallie Müller.

After the ceremony, they shared a casual meal of burgers together.

“We didn’t miss having anyone else there,” Klaus says. “We were simply relishing each other’s company.”

However, it didn’t take long before they decided to share their joyous news with their families.

A few weeks after the wedding, the secret finally came out to Klaus' parents.

A few months later, when Sallie discovered she was expecting, she shared the news with her parents and revealed she was married to Klaus.

Any concerns she had about her parents' response to breaking with tradition quickly faded away.

“They were overjoyed,” says Sallie.

Klaus' parents were equally thrilled at the thought of becoming grandparents.

Although Sallie and Klaus were still in their early twenties, and excited to start a family, they couldn’t help but feel a bit anxious about their financial situation.

Their most vivid memory, however, was the sheer excitement and happiness they felt.

“The months were filled with nothing but joy, and the time we spent with our son was an absolute delight,” Klaus recalls.

“We were doing everything we could to be the best parents, and honestly, there was never any question in our minds about whether it was too soon for us. We were just excited about the experience and felt incredibly fortunate to become parents,” says Klaus.

After their son was born, Sallie and Klaus traveled to Kenya to introduce him to Sallie’s parents. It was a memorable trip, and Klaus cherished the opportunity to immerse himself in a new culture.

Later on, Sallie’s brother moved to Germany for a time, providing much-needed support to the young family.

A decade later

Since then, Sallie and Klaus have expanded their family, welcoming a daughter in 2018 and their youngest son in the spring of 2020, right when the pandemic first began to sweep through Europe.

“He’s a Corona baby,” Sallie laughs, referring to their youngest child.

Because of Germany's restrictions at the time, Klaus wasn't allowed to be with Sallie during the birth, and he recalls how difficult it was to leave her standing outside the hospital.

For Sallie and Klaus, it’s essential that their children understand both their Kenyan and German roots. Their kids are bilingual, seamlessly switching between English and German, and they cherish both Kenyan and German customs.

“I don’t want them to feel out of place when they visit my country,” Sallie explains.

“It’s a beautiful way to teach your children about the world, and what it stands for – diversity. And with diversity, comes tolerance,” Klaus says.

The family has made several trips to Kenya with their two older children, and more are in the works. Sallie and Klaus have always dreamed of having a traditional wedding celebration there, which remains on their to-do list.

Sallie runs a YouTube channel today, while Klaus, though no longer working in aviation, still pursues his love for planes in his free time.

The couple still flies together frequently, often with the kids in tow.

“They absolutely love it,” Klaus says. “And it brings me so much joy to see them enjoy it too.”

Ten years after their initial meeting, Sallie and Klaus say they still have fun together, continue to collaborate as a team, and prioritize their family above all else.

“We started as friends, then became lovers, and now we’re soulmates. We’re still supporting each other to this day,” says Sallie.

“We’ve always followed our instincts,” Klaus says. “We often say that if everything else falls apart, the most important thing is that we still have each other.”