Two strangers who found love in a hotel elevator

In the summer of 2017, Cheryl Hurst arrived at the elegant St. George Lycabettus Hotel in Athens, Greece. Eager to settle in, she made her way to the elevator, hoping to refresh herself in her room.

As the elevator doors began to close, Cheryl rushed in at the last second, apologizing to the other passengers, unaware that one of them would soon become her future fiancé.

“He was already inside the elevator,” Cheryl recalls, speaking to Dinogo Travel.

That man was Preet Banerjee, a Canadian entrepreneur in his 30s who was in Athens for a conference.

“I remember Preet had a yellow watch on and a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up, which, I don’t know, just instantly makes any guy look attractive,” Cheryl recalls.

Even the elevator in the luxurious five-star hotel was sleek and stylish. Cheryl, a Canadian-born PhD student in her 20s who had flown in from the UK, felt a little out of place in her casual shorts and crop top, burdened by her travel backpack.

Cheryl admits she was immediately drawn to Preet, but Preet admits he didn’t really notice Cheryl at first.

“My first thought when she entered the elevator was, ‘Oh, a girl with a backpack,’” Preet shares with Dinogo Travel.

Preet was in the elevator with two of his friends.

“We all live in Toronto,” Preet explains. “They were vacationing at the same time as my conference, so we decided to meet up in Athens.”

Cheryl was heading to the seventh floor of the hotel, and by coincidence, so were Preet and his group. This became apparent when they discovered the elevator only reached the sixth floor.

It turned out the hotel had two elevators, and only one of them went higher than the sixth floor.

As the guests exited on the sixth floor and waited for the other elevator, they began to notice each other’s accents and realized they were all Canadians in Greece.

“Where are you from?” Preet asked Cheryl.

Cheryl grew up in Niagara Falls, Canada, but has spent most of her adult life in the UK. Brits often ask her where she's from, and she always answers 'Toronto' because, as she puts it, 'If you say Niagara Falls, people always start asking, 'I didn’t know Niagara Falls was a real town.'

So, without thinking, Cheryl told Preet she was from Toronto.

“Which part of Toronto?” Preet, a fellow Torontonian, asked as they stepped into the second elevator.

“Oh wait, I’m not actually from Toronto, I’m from Niagara Falls,” Cheryl quickly corrected herself, her face turning red.

“What a strange thing to lie about,” Preet joked, teasing her.

The elevator took them to the seventh floor, and Preet and Cheryl continued their conversation. They discovered they were both working on doctoral theses and attending the same conference at the hotel, which was specifically designed for doctoral candidates across various fields.

The next day, lectures and classes were scheduled to begin, but there was a cocktail reception that evening.

Preet invited Cheryl to join him and his friends for dinner before the reception, but she declined.

“I thought it would be a little strange to have dinner with a man I didn’t know,” she admits now.

Nevertheless, she told Preet she’d see him at the reception and found herself looking forward to it. They exited the elevator and parted ways as they walked down the corridor.

Initial Impressions

When Cheryl and Preet saw each other again at the reception, they were both glad to reconnect.

“Cheryl definitely stands out – she’s very talkative and outgoing,” says Preet. “At the pre-conference cocktail reception, I immediately sought her out since I didn’t know anyone else there.”

Cheryl and Preet began chatting, just as the conference organizers made an announcement.

Preet recalls, “They said, ‘Tomorrow we’ll kick off with a twinning exercise. Pair up with someone, and you’ll each have to share three facts about the other person as an icebreaker to start the conference.’”

Preet continued, “So I turned to Cheryl – since we had met earlier in the elevator – and I quickly listed off three things about her. Then I asked, ‘Now you tell me three things.’ And then I just walked off – and I don’t think that went down too well.”

Among the facts Preet shared were that he hosted a show on the Oprah Network and had trained as a race car driver.

Cheryl insists Preet also claimed that Barack Obama follows him on Twitter. Preet denies this, even though the former US president is one of his many followers.

“I never said that,” Preet protests. “I’ll stand by that statement until the end of time.”

Cheryl recalls, “My facts were pretty basic – ‘I have a dog, I tried to turn a bunch of jeans into shorts for this trip and ruined like seven pairs.’ I literally had no interesting facts, and Preet was just throwing out these really fascinating ones.”

Although Cheryl was impressed by Preet’s interesting facts, she wasn’t too pleased when he disappeared right after sharing them.

“What an arrogant guy,” she remembers thinking at the time.

Nevertheless, the next day, Cheryl and Preet found themselves sitting next to each other in the first seminar of the conference.

“I was just doodling on my notepad, drawing a house – and I remember Preet glancing over and teasing me about it,” Cheryl recalls.

Preet quickly wrote a note to Cheryl: “Bored?” he asked.

Cheryl couldn’t help but smile, and soon they were exchanging notes back and forth. Eventually, they started talking for real.

“We just kind of ended up gravitating towards each other during breaks and throughout the day,” Preet adds. “It felt natural, since we had similar views and plenty to talk about.”

Cheryl and Preet shared a natural chemistry and playful banter. Their obvious ease around each other led one attendee to ask how long they had been a couple.

“We literally met in the elevator,” Cheryl says.

One evening, the conference group decided to head into Athens for drinks.

“I wanted Preet to join us, so I went to his hotel room,” Cheryl recalls.

She knocked on the door, and when Preet opened it, he handed her a bag of laundry.

“Oh, thanks so much,” he said, barely glancing at her.

Cheryl stood there, bewildered, holding a bag of dirty laundry. Preet glanced up and immediately realized his mistake.

“Oh, my bad. I just called the front desk for laundry service,” he said, clearly embarrassed.

Despite the awkward moment, Preet agreed to join them for drinks. After a few rounds, most of the group decided to head to a nightclub.

“Preet and I both thought, ‘Clubbing is not for us.’ So we just stayed behind and had dinner,” Cheryl says. “We talked for hours—seven or eight hours, just chatting.”

Preet and Cheryl enjoyed each other’s company, but neither imagined anything romantic would come of it. They lived in different countries, had an age difference, and barely knew each other.

When Cheryl called her mother to update her on the conference, she casually mentioned Preet. She wondered if her mom recognized him from his appearances on Canadian TV.

Cheryl’s mom quickly picked up on the fact that her daughter might be interested in Preet, despite Cheryl’s strong protests to the contrary.

Exploring Athens

On the final day of the conference, Preet shared his plan to take a hop-on, hop-off bus tour of Athens before heading back home.

He extended the invitation to all the conference attendees, and while there was initial interest, only Cheryl showed up at 9 a.m. the following day. The two of them boarded the bus together.

“Preet and I spent the entire day exploring Athens and just chatting,” Cheryl recalls. “We had some really deep conversations.”

“We covered a wide range of topics,” Preet explains. “We spent so much time exploring the city. Some of it was about our dissertations, some personal stuff, and a bit about travel. It was all over the map.”

“There was no pressure because, at least for me, I figured I’d never see this person again. So, I felt comfortable opening up and getting an honest third-party perspective on a lot of things, which led to more meaningful discussions.”

It was an incredibly hot day, and Cheryl recalls the intense heat, combined with the rush of forming an unexpected connection with a stranger in a foreign country.

Although she felt at ease with Preet, Cheryl couldn’t shake off the nervousness of being alone in a foreign place with someone she barely knew.

“I’m always pretty cautious about situations like that,” Cheryl admits.

She was also concerned that Preet, being older and more established in his career, might suggest a fancy restaurant for lunch. So, she decided to be upfront about her budget.

Preet reassured her, saying he had no problem finding a casual spot or, if needed, he’d gladly cover the cost of lunch.

“It was a really smooth conversation about finances and where we were in life, and he was just so considerate,” Cheryl recalls.

“He wasn’t awkward or strange in any way. There’s your headline: ‘Not awkward or strange,’” she jokes, laughing.

At one point during the tour, Preet realized how relieved he was that Cheryl was the only other attendee who showed up for the excursion.

“In my mind, I was just focused on doing the tour, and if no one showed up, I didn’t mind – I would’ve gone alone. Whether she was the only one there or not didn’t change anything for me,” he says.

“Later, as we continued the tour and kept chatting, I thought, ‘I’m actually glad it’s just the two of us, not a large group,’ because it allowed for different conversations and the chance to really talk,” he reflects.

After a full day of exploring – from admiring the Acropolis to fruitlessly searching for a plaque honoring Plato, to watching the boats at the Piraeus port – Cheryl and Preet returned to the St. George Lycabettus, heading up to the hotel’s rooftop bar.

“It offers the best view of the Acropolis from afar and the entire city of Athens,” Preet says.

The two of them sat quietly, sipping red wine as they watched the sky transform into a beautiful mix of scarlet and copper over the ancient city. Cheryl describes it as a “stunning” evening.

“Then we both agreed, ‘Alright, you head to your room, and I’ll see you tomorrow,’”

The next morning, Cheryl waved as Preet left for the airport.

“Goodbye forever,” Cheryl joked as Preet climbed into a taxi, though she was hiding the sadness she felt inside.

“I remember watching his taxi pull away and thinking, ‘There’s no way that’s the last time I’ll see him. I just knew we’d cross paths again,’” she says today.

Still, at that moment, the thought of seeing him again “felt completely impossible,”

They never swapped contact details or phone numbers.

“We decided to let those few days be a perfect time as friends, without trying to keep it going through other means,” Cheryl says.

Reunion in Canada

A few months later, Cheryl went to Canada to visit her family. During her trip, she was planning to attend a conference in Toronto, wondering if Preet might also be there.

On a spontaneous impulse, she followed Preet on Twitter and sent him a message letting him know she was in town.

As it turned out, she was right – Preet was indeed attending the conference. The two quickly rekindled their connection, spending hours catching up again.

“That’s when we started to wonder, ‘Maybe there’s more to this than just meeting someone at a conference,’” Preet recalls.

“We found ourselves spending more and more time together, always coming up with reasons to talk,” says Preet.

When Cheryl returned home to the UK, she got a message from Preet on Twitter.

He confessed he had feelings for her and wanted to know if she felt the same.

Cheryl had liked Preet from the moment they met in the elevator, but she didn’t think it could work. The age difference and the distance between them seemed insurmountable. Plus, she worried about how her family and friends would react to her starting something with someone she'd met only twice.

Preet was disappointed, but he respected her decision and her boundaries.

“I just thought, ‘Well, that’s the end of it,’” he says. “I figured we’d probably never speak again.”

Three days later, Cheryl reached out again with another message.

“Forget what I said,” she wrote. “I’ve realized I want to be with you.”

Cheryl admits she felt it was a risk worth taking. She knew she would regret not giving it a chance.

From that point, Preet and Cheryl embarked on a long-distance relationship. They made it a point to FaceTime whenever possible, and Cheryl’s frequent trips to Canada to visit her family made it easier to stay connected.

Preet also managed to visit the UK on occasion, and they met up in various locations worldwide – often in places Preet was visiting for work.

“We knew we had limited time together, so we made a conscious effort to make the most of it. I think that definitely helped us grow emotionally and maybe even sped up the process,” Preet says.

Six months into their long-distance relationship, during one of their video calls, Cheryl told Preet she loved him.

Preet didn’t immediately respond with the same words. Instead, he became a little awkward. After the call, Cheryl replayed the moment over and over, wondering if he felt the same way.

The following day, there was a knock on Cheryl’s door. Preet had already booked a flight to surprise her in England. He hadn’t wanted to say 'I love you' over FaceTime; he wanted to say it to her face.

Cheryl’s worries about what her friends and family would think of the relationship disappeared when they met Preet. Her parents immediately took to him – especially since Cheryl’s mother had suspected from the start that her daughter had feelings for him.

Preet’s friends, who had witnessed their first meeting in the elevator, all claimed they could sense the connection between them right from the start. Cheryl also found an instant bond with Preet’s mom.

Although Preet’s family has Indian roots, the couple says they haven’t encountered any significant cultural barriers in their relationship.

Preet jokes that their primary cultural differences arise from Cheryl’s years in the UK versus his Canadian upbringing.

Then, of course, there are their differing interests. Cheryl has found herself at several Formula One races since they became a couple, while Preet attended a Taylor Swift concert for the first time.

Despite their differences, they share many common interests – a strong work ethic, a passion for travel, a love of movies, and a fondness for live comedy. But they agree that their greatest connection is their mutual love for deep, meaningful conversations.

“From the very first moment we met in the elevator, our conversation just flowed so easily,” Cheryl recalls.

Looking ahead

After three years of managing a long-distance relationship, Preet and Cheryl finally moved in together in Toronto in 2020. It was a stroke of luck – Cheryl arrived in Canada just as the country shut its borders at the beginning of the pandemic.

“I was in mid-flight when Canada announced the lockdowns,” Cheryl recalls.

During that year of isolation, the couple had plenty of time to talk about their future. They agreed that, long-term, they would make London their home. Cheryl feels deeply connected to the UK, while Preet is looking forward to a fresh new chapter.

“I see it as an adventure, and, of course, being with the person I love. So it was an easy decision in the end,” Preet shares.

Preet’s UK visa was recently approved, and the couple is now enjoying their life together in the UK while also planning their upcoming wedding.

“We got officially engaged while sitting on the couch during the pandemic in Toronto, but it was a very casual and unromantic proposal,” Preet laughs, explaining that he organized a second proposal earlier this year while they were vacationing in the south of France.

They were on a private rooftop terrace in Monaco, sipping Champagne and enjoying the breathtaking view. It was an unforgettable evening, though Preet admits it might have been more fitting to pop the question in the elevator on their way up.

“That would have been so poetic,” he says, chuckling. “I just don’t have that level of creativity.”

Cheryl and Preet have shared countless elevator rides since their first encounter at the St. George Lycabettus, so now they don’t really think about their unforgettable meet-cute every time they step into one.

Every now and then, the two still replay that moment in their minds, particularly in the lead-up to their wedding, as they reflect on the serendipitous events that brought them together.

“What I’ve learned is that you really never know what might happen,” Cheryl reflects.

“Everything just feels like it’s meant to be, so natural and perfect. Looking back at how it all unfolded still feels almost unreal,” Preet shares.

“It’s all these small turning points, and if any one thing had been different, none of this would’ve happened. It’s crazy because I truly believe we’re soulmates,” he says.