This Couple’s Yellowstone Meet-Cute Story Is Something Straight Out Of A Hallmark Movie

Love is in the air at Yellowstone National Park.

Hard to beat a good meet-cute story, and this one is something straight out of a Hallmark movie. A couple’s story of how they met – and eventually married – is getting a lot of attention thanks to a podcast called Chance Encounters paired with a CNN story. Recently, the podcast series highlighted the unlikely story of two people from different parts of the world serendipitously meeting in Yellowstone National Park.

Back in 2013, Andrew McGowan was in the national park on a trip with family. Shallen Yu, who is from Taiwan, was working in Yellowstone as a part of a student summer work program. To be more specific, she was stationed in a general store… one that McGowan just happened to walk by, and when he did, it was love at first sight:

“I saw her through the window and I was like, ‘I’m going to marry that girl.'”

Andrew and his family had apparently stayed in Yellowstone countless times before, but never in the Canyon area. They camped there that year, which was the same year that Shallen – excited to be in a national park for the summer since she was studying for a geographic information degree – was stationed in the Canyon area of the park for her summer work.

One day, Andrew went to the park’s nearest general store to pick up some things, including fishing licenses. It’s almost like fate was guiding him that day, because he walked right into the store Shallen was working. And she wasn’t even at the counter he needed to go to… but Andrew made things work:

“She was working over at another counter. So I went and bought chocolate milk at her register that she was working at, so that I could talk to her.”

Fortunately for Andrew, he was able to speak (and flirt) in Mandarin. Shallen now describes it as “Bad Mandarin,” but it was Mandarin nonetheless. That certainly got the attention of the girl working at the general store, but the conversation eventually ended, and Andrew walked out.

He met back up with his brother, and they got back in the car to head back to camp. But Andrew recalls that something wouldn’t let him just leave without another chance of seeing Shallen:

“He was like, ‘Alright, we gotta go back.’ And I was like, ‘No, I gotta talk to that girl again.’ My brother had started the car, he was starting to back up, and I was like ‘No, I’m going for it.’ So, I got out the car while he was backing up.”

Andrew, being a little forward, walked back in and asked if Shallen had a boyfriend. She said no, so Andrew asked her out to dinner. She once again said no… but then countered with an ice cream date. And Shallen’s reasoning for doing so is hilarious:

“My thought process at a time — it’s like, ‘I don’t know you, and I’m here in the States, all by myself. If we just sit in front of the store, there’s a lot of people watching over me.’ A lot of retired people come work in Yellowstone over the summer, and some of them, I could be their granddaughter… They can see me, I’ll be safe.”

That ended up being their first date, and it stretched on long after the ice cream was eaten. Shallen ended up meeting Andrew’s entire family at one point during the day, and the couple even snapped a picture in Yellowstone National Park together – weird at the moment, but now a priceless moment caught on camera.

Andrew and Shallen got together two more times before that summer was over: One time in Yellowstone again, and another when Shallen visited Andrew and his family in Utah. But once she returned to Taiwan, the odds were stacked against them. Not only were they doing long distance… there was the huge hinderance of a massive time-zone difference.

But McGowan and Yu stayed strong, and Andrew even spent one semester abroad in 2015 studying Mandarin at the Mandarin Training Center at Taipei Normal University’s Mandarin Training Center. The more time they spent together, the more they knew they were right for each other. That’s why they decided to elope later in 2015, and did so in the hills of the Utah town Andrew was from.

Around a year later in 2016, they had the big “wedding party” which allowed for their friends and family to get together and celebrate them. Andrew and Shallen then welcomed children into the world in 2017 and 2019, and are still happily married to this day.

And it all started when two paths that probably shouldn’t have crossed did so in Yellowstone National Park.

Andrew McGowan says that there was some greater power out in the universe that brought he and his wife Shallen together, and that even though they went through some challenging times with long distance, he’d do everything over again in a heartbeat:

“I think in some ways the universe chose us for each other, but we did ultimately make the choice of each other. And then we’ve made choices to respect and care about our relationship with each other and value that. I feel like she’s an extension of me, and I’m an extension of her. And we’re able to work together.

Walking in and seeing her, like I said for me it was love at first sight. I obviously couldn’t see where our journey would take us, and I couldn’t see where life was going to take us… but if I could go back, I would do it 100 times over. I mean, even with the difficult things, even with the hard things, 100 times over, I would do it again.”

The couple obviously has a number of different things that stir up romantic memories, and they’ve even taken their kids to Yellowstone to show them where they met. But if they ever want to really feel young and in love, there’s one treat they can partake in that brings them back to that fateful day they met, as Shallen described:

“When we eat ice cream, we definitely think about it.”

You can hear more about Andrew and Shallen’s story in the podcast episode below:

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