Finding Love and All Its Quirks, Even If 2,654 Miles Away

“Radical honesty” on Sarah Lenz’s dating profile, along with no geographical restrictions, led to Stephen Paskey road tripping for love.

In the summer of 2019, Stephen Paskey was on vacation, sitting in an Istanbul cafe, smoking a hookah. As much as he had hoped to meet a life partner by then, it just wasn’t happening. In a few years, he thought, he would retire and maybe move to South America. Eight months later, back home in Buffalo, he connected with Sarah Lenz online. Given how well they clicked, both say that under normal circumstances, they probably would have met within a day or two. But things were anything but normal. It was late March 2020, two weeks after the country shut down because of the coronavirus pandemic. And then, of course, there was another obstacle: 2,654 miles.