Love can be found in unusual places but one woman has revealed she met her husband in a truly bizarre circumstance — after finding him asleep on her sofa.
Katherine Johnstone, from Highland Falls, New York City, had "partied too hard" one night back in 2016 and asked her sister to keep the door unlocked because she knew she'd be back late. But when she arrived home at 8am the next day she made a terrifying discovery.
"I opened my front door and I found this guy sleeping on our couch with a blanket over him. He was snoring and had taken his shoes off," she recalled.
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The then 22-year-old shone the flashlight from her phone over the stranger in an attempt to identify him and woke her sister to check whether she had anyone staying over. But when the women realised they had no clue who the man was, they quickly fled the home petrified and called the police to tell them there was a "random man" on their sofa.
Katherine, now 29, added: "I was nervous as I didn't know who he was and what his intentions were but he was just peacefully sleeping. My biggest concern was just to get me and my sister out of the house and make sure we were safe."
It turns out the man, Michael Johnstone, has been on a wild night out too and had staggered into the home in a drunken stupor, mistaking it for a colleague's house, before falling asleep. He was woken up by cops who arrested him after Katherine decided to press charges "just to be safe".
He was charged with second-degree trespassing and a mugshot of him was printed in the local newspaper for the whole town to see. But Katherine dropped the charges against Michael, 35, when she realised his innocent mistake after discovering they had mutual friends.
She explained: "The following day I was telling my friends what happened and everyone thought it was very funny. One of my friends said they knew him and then other people started to tell me that they were friends with him and he was a good guy and asked us to drop the charges against him."
Michael was still ordered to do 50 hours of community service but once the charges had been dropped, he sheepishly turned up to Katherine's to apologise to the whole family, in what he describes as a "pretty wild icebreaker" with his now in-laws. "He wrote a letter to my family and brought us flowers and really wanted to show that he had made an honest mistake and this wasn't who he was," Katherine said.
After his heartfelt apology, the pair added each other on social media and became friends. When Katherine split up with her boyfriend a year later, Michael invited her to a Fourth of July party, where the pair hit it off and started dating.
Michael got down on one knee in Central Park on December 30, 2020, and the couple tied the knot on May 14, 2022. Now they even have a baby together, welcoming their daughter Mila in February 2023.
"We laugh and can't believe that this is how we met and now have got married and have a family. People bring it up all the time. It's a beautiful story and silly because it's so unique. I wouldn't change a thing and I think it makes our love even stronger," Katherine said.
She added: "My husband is a great man and I'm very lucky to have him. We're very lucky to have each other." Michael, originally from Washington, New Hampshire, recalled how he was "very scared" when he was woken up by police after a night out with co-workers.
Revealing what he thinks led to him asleep in Katherine's house, he said: "I'd reached out to one of my co-workers to sleep in his house, which was odd because his house wasn't far from mine. What I think happened was I thought I was going to his house but the reality is I ended up at Katherine's and fell asleep on her sofa."
It was the only time Michael had been arrested, which left him in a "mass paranoid state" about the possibility of it affecting his job but it all turned out for the best. "Our wedding was a great day. A lot of the people that came had been there from the start of our story — it was a full-circle moment. As a life partner, Katherine always brings out the best in me and she's a great mum," he said.
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