A woman met her boyfriend playing Minecraft and moved 2,762 miles to live with him – despite never meeting in person.
Briana Creswell, 22, met Luke Walker, 29, through an in-game Minecraft chat three years ago.
The pair hit it off despite living in different countries. Briana was living her hometown of Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, while Luke was in Derby, Derbyshire, UK.
The pair became closer chatting over Discord – an instant messaging platform – but only confessed their feelings three months later.
They became official a month later but remained long distance until Briana decided to make the move to the UK in April 2024.
Briana, a supervisor at Starbucks, said: “There was obviously the concern of ‘oh my god are we going to end up hating each other?’, but we’ve got our own place now, and we’re very comfortable together.
“It’s all about endurance.
“It was a year and a half of us dating across the ocean but we called every single day, and now living together it doesn’t feel like much has changed. Still, I would never want to do long distance again.
“I’m so much happier being here with him.”
The pair met on Minecraft in the spring of 2022 but remained fri at first.
Briana found herself getting feelings for Luke, a movie theater usher, and considered moving abroad after taking a solo trip to Amsterdam in summer 2022.
She said: “It was my first time flying alone, being on a trip alone, and it was a foreign country.
“I didn’t know the language, but he kept me company from my phone.
“It was my first time ever leaving Canada, so while I was on the trip I was thinking, hold on, I could actually live in a different country.”
After the trip, her bond with Luke only grew stronger, and she found herself unintentionally chatting with him more.
Briana said: “I felt bad because I was talking to him more than anyone else.
“I thought -‘Why am I spending so much time with this person when all my fri are like ‘where are you? Are you alive?’ But people at work noticed that I was happier.”
A few days after her trip, both she and Luke found themselves with a few days off work and decided to see how long they could stay on a call for.
The call lasted five full days, and in the middle of it, the pair confessed their feelings for one another.
Briana said: “He was always a flirt but then it got flirtier. He was laying it on heavy until even I couldn’t deny it.
“I was confused but I was having a good time.”
She wanted to start dating right away, but Luke suggested they take a month as a trial period, during which the frequency of their calls increased even more.
Briana said: “I warned him – it’s all or nothing. I’m not going to do it halfway.
“I’ll admit I was a little overeager.”
Finally, on Luke’s birthday in August 2022, he asked her to be his girlfriend, and that winter she began to seriously consider moving to the UK.
She began researching visas, plane tickets, and housing, and she says that while she did have some concerns, no reasons not to move ever came up.
Briana said: “We spoke about it a lot and I said: ‘It’s a really stupid idea to want to move over there without meeting you first,’ and he said ‘Yeah it is. What if I’m a serial killer?’
“I didn’t want to rush into anything. I wanted to be completely sure that I wanted to do this because there’s no going back, but there were never any signs that this was something I shouldn’t do.
“Call it love or me being stupid, but I was willing to take my chances.
“Some people thought I was crazy to be doing long distance, but overall I think they’re happy it worked out so well.”
When her lease ended in April 2024, she boarded the flight to London, where Luke met her at the airport to drive her to their new home in Derby.
Once in the airport, she said: “I couldn’t stay sitting for any longer because I knew he was in that building.
“Suddenly he was standing next to me saying ‘okay, let’s go.’”
Briana said it was a bit awkward at first, but ten months on they have settled into their new lives together.
Luke said: “Most people, I assume, when meeting someone for the first time in person, wouldn’t move in together as soon as possible.
“We did, and it was the best choice I could have made. She’s even more amazing face-to-face.”
