Julius Alan Schorzman and Louis Edward Morton met as teammates while playing for the Seattle Quake Rugby Football Club, an L.G.B.T.-inclusive rugby club, in May 2017. Mr. Schorzman had joined the team when Mr. Morton was away on a six-month airline assignment in Chicago.

“We met in a bar in Seattle after one of our team practices,” Mr. Morton said. “Our eyes just locked and I was awe-struck by his physical appearance. He was extremely handsome, and at 6-3 had an incredibly athletic build, I thought he was out of my league.”

They began a conversation, and it wasn’t long before Mr. Schorzman was awe-struck by what he called Mr. Morton’s “piloting adventures,” which included the story of a miraculous day in 2015 when Mr. Morton, a pilot who was then new to Alaska Airlines, was forced to ditch a Cirrus SR22 he was flying from California to Hawaii after a malfunction in the fuel system.

Mr. Morton told Mr. Schorzman that after deploying the aircraft’s parachute system and landing in the Pacific Ocean, he used the onboard life raft to wait for rescue from a nearby Holland America cruise ship.