Tennis player Félix Auger-Aliassime first noticed equestrian Nina Aliassime from afar during one of his tournaments in March 2019. “When I couldn’t shake the thought of her, I felt strongly compelled to meet her before leaving the city if I wanted to leave with no regrets,” he remembers. “I decided to send her a message asking if we could go for a dinner during the tournament and was quite relieved when she was open to the idea.”

A couple of days later, they went on their first dinner date. “Without sounding cliche, it was truly love at first sight,” the Canadian tennis pro says of falling head over heels for Nina, who lives in the U.S. but was born to a Croatian mother and a Moroccan father. “After two hours, I told her this was the start of a long and beautiful future together, and within days, we both knew that we wanted to marry. I think that sums up our relationship quite well: never a sliver of doubt, instant comfortability, a young and innocent honesty, and love that never stopped growing from the moment we laid eyes on each other.”

They got engaged in November 2024 during a vacation to the Seychelles. “While relaxing outside on our balcony together, I asked her to grab my notebook from inside our room,” Félix recalls. “What was supposed to be my notebook was actually a letter from me to her. A letter that dated back to May 5, 2019, written a month and a half after our very first meeting. It was a letter that I had kept through all of the years to one day show her just how confident I was that we’d still be together years later.”

As she came back onto the balcony, Félix was waiting with a ring. “It was a beautiful and intimate moment that we had looked forward to for years, and I couldn’t have dreamt of it being more magical than it was,” he says. “The rest of our evening felt like it was out of a movie as we went straight to a sunset picnic at the top of the island.” As day turned to night, they moved to the beach for a barbecue and called their family and friends to share their happy news.