Love and Wanderlust: They met in London, fell in love in Italy, and got engaged in Paris. A couple shares how their holiday romance became a marriage withstanding the tests of time.

• Love and Wanderlust is an Insider holiday romance series where people who found love traveling tell their stories.
• In this tale, we hear how Lisa McCarty met the love of her life, Ryan, on a work trip to London.

This is a girl meets boy story — with a European twist.

In the summer of 2006, Lisa McCarty was 27, started a new job at a US defense magazine, and headed to London. It was summer in the city, she tells Insider — July, to be exact. But this was no ordinary holiday for Lisa, who was attending a business conference called the Farnborough Airshow.

"The show itself is all just networking and connecting with people," Lisa said. "It's a grueling schedule because you're basically at the trade show all day, and then you go to client events, and then you go out to dinner, and then you go out for drinks. And so it's all day long networking and working, but really fun too."

Accompanied by her new team, she arrived in London, preparing for the first day of the conference, which involved mingling with different company representatives at countless trade booths.

And that's when 31-year-old Ryan McCarty saw Lisa for the first time.

In an attempt to be subtle, Lisa says Ryan didn't approach her straight off the bat.

"I walked by the booth, and apparently, he sent his colleague to come say hello to me," she said. "At the time, I thought it was a business opportunity for me."

"He was kind of standing in the background and looking at me," she said, laughing. "I was like, 'Why is this guy looking at me?'"

Ryan and Lisa had no idea who each other was or the companies they worked for and didn't even speak to each other that day, she added.

Thankfully, that's not where the story ends. Spoiler alert: Ryan and Lisa have been together for 17 years, happily married for 14 years, and share two children, Ella, 10, and Noah, 4.

But let's not get ahead of ourselves. After that first day, and to the credit of one of Ryan's colleagues, who Lisa says they still regard as a close friend, they both ended up being at the same post-conference meetup at London's Tiger Tiger bar later that evening.

Eventually, Ryan mustered up the courage to approach Lisa, who said she was still "clueless" his colleague was trying to set them up.

"At the end of the evening, he says, 'Can I walk you to your taxi?' And I was like, 'Why?' I was totally not catching on," she added. Before she hopped in the cab, Ryan politely asked whether he could get her number so they could get together back in the US — neither she nor Ryan had a clue at that point they both lived in Arlington, Virginia.

"It turned out actually we lived five minutes from each other," Lisa said. "So random. But it was also kind of one of those serendipity moments."

From the first date to forever

Although Lisa says Ryan was immediately drawn to her, it took their first date, which took place stateside, for her to realize that the person she wanted to spend the rest of her life with was right in front of her. Their first date was a group outing attended by some of their separate friends.

"I am my mother's daughter," she joked. "I also wanted to have an out if I wasn't sure."

She thought he was "the sweetest guy," but she really fell hard when he offered to drive her home, and they kissed. "I know it sounds like out of a movie or something, but it's so true. Literally swept me off my feet," Lisa said. "I felt like in all the rom-com movies that I had seen; it was that moment that you really want to happen."

"From that moment on, we basically spent all the time together," she added.

After two years of dating and a holiday to Italy, where they first said their "I love you's," Ryan proposed to her at midnight on the Pont Alexandre bridge overlooking the sparkling Eiffel Tower of Paris — not so coincidentally, the pair had traveled there for the same type of conference that they'd initially met at in London.

"We met in London, fell in love in Italy, and then he proposed to me in Paris," Lisa said.

"Then he put the ring on, and then we walked to the closest bar and got a vodka martini," she said. In honor of their international love story, the couple, who now live in Washington, DC, keep figurines and tokens from the different countries they've shared special moments together around the house, including a framed photograph of the Parisian bridge where Ryan proposed to Lisa, behind their dining table.

For Lisa and Ryan, finding love abroad wasn't part of the plan

As Lisa recalls, she met Ryan at a time in her life when love was the furthest thing on her agenda, especially finding it abroad.

"I was very single," she said. "I had been in another long relationship with someone prior to, but it wasn't like, I wasn't thinking of marriage, I wasn't thinking of forever at that point." She told Insider that her mind was on her career, and so was Ryan's.

"Both of us at that time were really focused on our career," she said. It might be cheesy, she says, but "when you're not looking for it, I almost feel like it's when things happen."

But what if Ryan hadn't lived in Virginia? Lisa told Insider it might've been an obstacle, but nothing they couldn't handle.

"It might have changed the chronology of events," she said. "But I definitely think something was meant to bring us together."

And although they had a storybook start, life, as it is for anyone, hasn't always been such a fairytale. "I went through almost a decade of infertility and struggling to get pregnant with both of our kids," Lisa said. But with Ryan, they made it through.

"He's my best friend, and he's my rock," she said. "He's the love of my life and I'm so grateful for him every day."

So what about the rest of us singletons dreaming of such an epic, globe-trotting romance?

"Just always be open to meeting people and keep yourself open," Lisa said. "Anything's possible."