When Englishman Francis Chadwick decided to spend Christmas in Las Vegas, his goal was simply to escape everything.
It was 2014. Francis was 34 and in the middle of a divorce.
“I just wanted to get away,” Francis tells CNN Travel today. “Christmas being, obviously, quite a family orientated time of year I didn’t want to be around anything Christmassy. I was like, ‘Where’s the least Christmassy place I could go to?’ Vegas seemed like the place.”
So while his family and friends were spending evenings enjoying festive drinks, decorating Christmas trees and watching “Love Actually,” Francis packed his bag, leaving his Christmas sweater behind, and headed to the United States.
“I was in Washington, D.C., for a couple of days. I went to Dallas for a few days, watched the Cowboys down there, and then on to Vegas over the Christmas period,” recalls Francis. “And my mindset at the time — I had no interest in women, relationships, anything at — I hadn’t even contemplated a relationship since the separation from my first wife.”
On Christmas Eve 2014, Francis was playing three-card poker at Vegas’ MGM Grand Hotel and Casino, a sweeping, vast gambling palace on the Vegas Strip.
He was pretty absorbed in the game when a woman sat down next to Francis, and he looked up.
The woman smiled widely, introducing herself as Tehzin from Toronto. Then, Tehzin introduced Francis to what seemed like her entire family, who all appeared to be in tow. Subsequently, Tehzin’s sister and brother-in-law sat down at the poker table next to her.
“So, how do we play?” Tehzin asked Francis, smiling again.
Francis didn’t know what to think. All he knew was he was drawn to Tehzin. Slowly, surprising himself, he smiled back. It felt like the first time he’d smiled properly in months.
Francis didn’t — at that point — know the significance of this moment.
“You’ve got me traveling to Vegas from the UK, Tehzin traveling there from Canada… What are the chances that we would actually cross paths at all, let alone everything else that happened next? It’s pretty crazy,” says Francis today.
Tehzin from Toronto
When Tehzin from Toronto crossed paths with Francis that December 2014, she was also in her mid-30s.
“I was at the point in my life where all of my friends and a lot of members of my family were around my age, and already were in relationships or married. A lot of them were having kids and moving on in their lives — in the best way possible. And I kind of felt left behind because I didn’t find anybody by that time,” Tehzin tells CNN Travel today.
“I kind of had given up on the idea that I was going to meet anybody, and I was thinking that train had passed, and I just missed it …”
When Tehzin was in her 20s and would go on trips and travel to new places, she’d always wonder in the back of her mind whether she might meet someone significant.
But by the time Tehzin traveled to Vegas, at age 34, she’d stopped thinking that was a possibility. Instead, she was simply looking forward to the family time.
“I was there with my whole family — my extended family, my parents, my sisters, my brother-in-law,” Tehzin recalls. “We all had time off during the holiday season and decided to go on a family trip.”
Tehzin’s family chose Vegas because of the warm weather, short flight time and potential for fun activities. While Tehzin doesn’t gamble, she says most of her family enjoys “occasional gambling at the casino.”
“I remember going on this trip and not even taking any makeup with me or anything. I was thinking, ‘I’m just there with my family, and we’re just going to hang out,’” Tehzin recalls. “And that’s when I met Francis…”
That Christmas Eve, Tehzin and her family were walking through the MGM casino after dinner and Tehzin’s family kept encouraging her to try her hand at gambling.
“They would stop at a table, explain the game, and the rules of the game, say, ‘OK, what do you think about this table?’ And I’d be like, ‘No, I don’t like this game. Let’s move on.’ Then we finally got to this three-card poker table, which is where Francis was sitting …”
Tehzin noticed Francis right away.
“Instantly, obviously,” she says, laughing. “He’s a very handsome man. I was like, ‘Oh, I have a good feeling about this table.’”
After Tehzin introduced herself, her brother-in-law attempted to guide her through the poker.
“I’m not listening to him because I’m too busy staring at Francis, and so I’m losing all sorts of money because I’m not paying attention to what’s going on here,” recalls Tehzin, laughing. “But I started chatting with Francis — or flirting with Francis — and we were there for hours, four hours maybe, at the table together.”
Tehzin doesn’t drink, but she’s naturally outgoing and sociable. Francis is usually a little more reserved and quiet, but “he was drinking, so he was more talkative,” as Tehzin puts it.
“And he had this lovely British accent,” she adds.
In between discussing poker rules, Tehzin and Francis did a lot of joking back and forth about UK words and phrases.
“That was a good icebreaker,” says Tehzin.
But while Tehzin was enjoying Francis’ company, she kept thinking: “He’s too handsome to be here on Christmas Eve on his own, I’m going to get in trouble. Some girl’s going to come and be like, ‘What are you doing, partying with my man?’”
“I just met you. I don’t know you …”
Eventually, after losing yet another game, Tehzin decided to cut her losses — in more ways than one. She got up to go, said goodbye to Francis and the rest of the people at the table. Her brother and sister-in-law followed.
Throughout their time at the poker table, Francis had found himself drawn to Tehzin. He liked her smile, liked her laugh, enjoyed their easy repartee. But he wasn’t looking for romance, and didn’t let himself even consider the prospect.
But as Tehzin got up to leave, one of the other people on the table — an American guy who was there with his wife and had joined in with some of the joking back and forth — nudged Francis.
“He said, ‘You should go after her,’” recalls Francis. “And something in my head just sort of clicked. I thought, ‘I should.’ So I did. I got up from the table, and I caught up with Tehzin and tapped her on the shoulder.”
Tehzin looked surprised but happy to see Francis.
“She turned around like, ‘Oh!’ And I said, ‘What are you up to? Do you want to get a drink?’” recalls Francis today. “She agreed. And we took things from there.”
Sitting at the bar, just the two of them, Tehzin and Francis talked in more depth.
Francis, aware there was something between them, felt the desire to be honest about his divorce.
“I told her my life story,” he says. “That I was separated — technically still married, but there was no chance of reconciliation or anything there.”
Francis also told Tehzin he was a smoker and absolutely obsessed with American football — more than slightly drunk at this point, Francis felt he needed to run through any potential offputting things about him.
“And I’m thinking, ‘I just met you. I don’t know you. I don’t think I’m ever going to see you after today. Why are you telling me all this?’” recalls Tehzin.
“But I just found him to be so different from other men that I had gone on dates with, because he was so honest and clear and direct. And I found that to be different, but in a charming way. Later I found out that he’s just an extraordinarily honest person, to a fault, he is extraordinarily honest and just wants to be really clear. But at that point I was just like, ‘Oh, how endearing. Crazy, but endearing.’”
After they finished their drinks, Tehzin challenged Francis to a game of pool. She flirtily declared she was going to win, suggesting the loser would pay for drinks.
“I was saying to Francis, ‘I’m going to kick your butt,’” says Tehzin. “Not realizing he’s a pool shark, and had played a lot and was really good at it.”
Then, several wins in, Francis threw in new stakes.
“I said, ‘If you win, I’ll come and visit you in Toronto in the next six months,’” Francis recalls.
Then, to their mutual surprise, Tehzin played like a pro. She won the game.
Tehzin was too busy celebrating her unlikely victory to fully take in the fact that Francis was now obligated to visit her in Canada.
“We made that wager, we played, we hung out a little bit more, and then he walked me back to my room, and we made plans to meet the next day,” she says.
Tehzin spent much of the following day, which was Christmas Day, with her family, but in the evening she reunited with Francis back on the casino floor.
When they reunited, Francis immediately noticed that, even without the alcohol haze, the conversation with Tehzin flowed easily, naturally.
“We’ve always been able to, right from day one, be able to talk to each other about things that perhaps we wouldn’t have talked to other people about, and we’ve always been kind of on the same page,” he says.
“It’s very rare that we’re misaligned, I would say, on anything. And we had that right from the outset.”
On December 26, Tehzin was set to leave Vegas. Before she went to the airport, Francis took Tehzin to Carlo’s Bakery at the Venetian Hotel, treating her to cake.
“We only had 30 minutes,” he recalls. “I had a brownie, Tehzin had red velvet. And then she had to get back in a taxi to go back to the airport.”
“We only met three times, and then I left,” says Tehzin. “I was a little sad when I left, because I didn’t think I would see him again. I thought he was such a great guy, and I was like ‘Oh, this has been so fun and so random and unexpected.’ But I was also a realist at the time. I thought, ‘You meet people in life, you have these encounters, and then you move on.’”
But as Tehzin left, Francis told her he’d see her in Toronto, as promised. The pool game had confirmed it, after all.
“I didn’t believe him,” Tehzin says. “But when I landed back in Toronto, Francis sent me the screenshot. He’d booked his flight. I was like, ‘Oh my God, he’s serious.’ And then he came at the end of January.”
Reuniting in Canada
In the lead up to Francis’ visit, Tehzin surprised herself by not feeling any hint of nerves.
“I was just super excited,” she says. “But then when I was telling my friends about it, they were like, “This guy, you don’t know anything about him.’ My family and my friends. They were all like, ‘You don’t know anything about this guy.’ So they’re all Googling, searching for anything they can find on Francis.”
“That noise … I listened to it. But I just kind of put it to the corner a little bit, because I don’t know. I just had a good feeling. And sometimes you’ve got to go with your gut. I was just excited to see him. I thought we’d chat, we would use the opportunity to get to know each other better and decide what was going on.”
Francis was equally excited to see Tehzin again. And his friends and family were all encouraging.
“They were really happy for me, because I had been sort of pretty down that year, since separating from my first wife,” he says. “And after Tehzin and I met, in order to be able to move on, I went to counseling to help me with getting through the whole emotional aspect of going through a divorce, and being able to move past that. My friends and family were all very happy with the fact I was moving on with my life.”
While Tehzin’s friends were a little apprehensive, they were also looking forward to checking out Francis for themself.
After she’d described him — “tall, very handsome, beautiful eyes” — Tehzin’s friends had jokingly nicknamed Francis “The Dream.”
“Then we all started calling him The Dream,” says Tehzin, laughing. “They didn’t know his name for the longest time. They just called him The Dream for the longest time.”
Tehzin put together a packed Toronto itinerary for Francis, including time with her loved ones and a day trip to Niagara Falls.
“I organized who he was going to meet, where we were going to go, which places for brunch and dinner. And I had all my outfits planned for every day. I was super excited,” she says.
“And then when we met again, it was just so easy, comfortable.”
“It was all pretty comfortable, easy,” agrees Francis. “We had a great time.”
The only issue was Francis acclimatizing to the freezing Toronto winter.
“It was pretty damn cold,” he says.
But Tehzin reassured him that, “if you ever want to live in this country, this is the worst it’s going to get in terms of temperature.”
During Francis’ visit, he and Tehzin also discussed where they saw their connection going, they confirmed neither of them wanted just an extended vacation romance. They saw their relationship going further than that, and they discussed everything that came along with that vision.
“Future wants and desires, different cultures. Understanding of those cultural differences,” says Tehzin. “I’m a spiritual person. So whoever I was with, it would be important that they are tolerant of my values and my beliefs.”
Tehzin, who is Ismaili Muslim, took Francis to the Ismaili Centre in Toronto to introduce him to her faith. She was happy to see he was open, curious and respectful.
“He asked a lot of really great questions, and he got a good tour,” she says.
Tehzin and Francis also talked about where they might want to live during that Toronto visit, and they decided that they’d work toward the goal of Francis moving to Canada. It was a relatively easy decision — Tehzin wanted to stay close to her loved ones, and Francis’ job seemed more easily transferable.
“So we had a lot of really, really good conversations,” says Tezhin. “And that set the stage for, ‘OK, we’re going to be together. We know where we’re going to be geographically, and let’s just see where this goes.’”
Long distance
Tehzin and Francis planned out the rest of 2015 with regular visits and trips.
“We tried to meet every four months in person,” says Tehzin. “I visited Francis, and Francis visited me, and then we also traveled together.”
It was hard being apart, but Tehzin and Francis continued to find their relationship “easy,” even when they missed one another.
“It felt like everything that was just kind of meant to be because we were so aligned,” is how Francis puts it.
The only stumbling block was the question of marriage. Tehzin had made it clear that this was something she would want at some point — not right away, but one day. But Francis was still working through the aftereffects of his first marriage falling apart.
“And I was of the mindset at the time that I didn’t want to get married again, ever again,” says Francis.
But as he continued to talk through these emotions in counseling, Francis became more open to the idea of marrying again one day.
Tehzin never questioned Francis’ commitment to their relationship, so she let him work through these feelings.
“I hoped that he would change his mind on the idea,” she says. “And lucky for me, he did.”
A turning point in Tehzin and Francis’ romance was a summer 2015 trip to the United Kingdom. Francis introduced Tehzin to his family and all of his friends (“that was great fun,” says Tehzin) and then the couple headed up to Edinburgh, Scotland.
In Edinburgh, they climbed to the top of Arthur’s Seat, an extinct volcano that offers a beautiful panorama of the historic Scottish capital.
“We both had a similar experience while we were at the top of Arthur’s Seat,” says Francis. “We didn’t say it. But for both of us, it was the first time we felt like saying that we loved each other.”
Later, Tehzin wrote Francis a postcard from Edinburgh, expressing everything she didn’t say in that moment. While neither of them voiced their emotions aloud at the time, Francis felt in Edinburgh, for the first time, vividly, that he wanted to marry Tehzin.
And a few months later, while together at Niagara Falls, in Canada, Tehzin and Francis told each other they loved each other. They said all the words they didn’t speak in Scotland.
The following year, in October 2016, Tehzin and Francis found themselves back at Niagara Falls. Francis had an engagement ring in his pocket.
“We went on the Maid of the Mist, the boat that goes under the falls,” recalls Francis. “We went into the Falls, and got soaking wet, and just as the boat turned out, and we were coming out of the Falls, there was this little rainbow, and the boat was going under this little rainbow. And so I got down on one knee, and proposed.”
It was a magical, memorable moment for Tehzin and Francis. They hugged — both emotional, both soaking wet from the water spray — and laughed.
Tehzin and Francis were married in Toronto in the summer of 2017. Tehzin took Francis’ last name, becoming Tehzin Chadwick.
“We had six events over five days,” says Tehzin. “It was great. It was perfect. Our family and friends from both Canada and the UK and around the world. Lots of festivities, lots of color, lots of food.”
The celebrations included an Ismaili ceremony, as well as a non-denominational celebration.
“My sisters gave a speech, Francis’ best friend gave a speech, there were references to how we met, references to him being called The Dream,” says Tehzin. “His wedding band, I had it engraved inside — it says, ‘Dream fulfilled.’”
“Dream fulfilled”
A decade after they met on Christmas Eve in Las Vegas, Tehzin and Francis still live together in Toronto.
“We try to go back to the UK at least once a year and visit family,” says Tehzin. “We love to travel, and we always try to incorporate the UK as part of our annual travel trips. And of course we incorporate Vegas as part of our annual trips, too.”
The couple love returning to the spot where they first met, on the floor of the MGM Casino.
“People always say, ‘Oh, I guess what happened in Vegas didn’t stay in Vegas with you two.’ We hear that a lot,” says Tehzin, laughing. “It truly is a really unique way that we met. And people get excited about that. We get excited about telling our story as well.”
“I think the romance in our story is in the unexpected nature of it,” says Francis, who adds “that includes it being at Christmas and being in Vegas.”
“This time of year always brings back a lot of fond memories, so we always make it a point to celebrate this time of year with friends and family and reminisce about the day we met,” says Tehzin.
On Christmas Eve, Francis and Tehzin exchange stockings and cards.
“I always reference in my card to her about our meeting on Christmas Eve,” says Francis.
“Now that we are married, we tend to celebrate our wedding anniversary more than our first meeting anniversary,” adds Tezhin. “But this is a very big milestone year for us. December 24, 2024, will be 10 years since we first laid eyes on each other and our lives changed completely taking us on a wonderful journey.”
Earlier in December, Tehzin and Francis went to Vegas to celebrate and mark their decade together.
“We wore the exact same clothes we had on when we first met, and we sat on the same poker table where we first met in the MGM casino,” says Tehzin. “That was a fun moment.”
Tehzin describes her 10 years with Francis as “so fun.”
“I feel truly blessed to have found my soulmate in Francis and to think I would meet him in Vegas, on Xmas eve, while I was on vacation with my family is still unimaginable to me,” she says. “It’s been so fun, and it’s been a blessing.”
