After all, it's that very ticket that led to their 20-year long marriage and four kids.
The world might know him as "the football player, David Beckham" and her as "Posh Spice" but to each other, they are just David and Victoria Beckham. And their love story is one that will truly make you believe in love at first sight.
The Spice Girl member first met the soccer player while they were attending a charity football match and Victoria revealed that she wrote her number on the back of a plane ticket he had on him. It was in 1997 and they were both hanging out in the Manchester United players' lounge, something that was a perk of being a Spice Girl, according to E! Online.
"While the other football players stand at the bar drinking with their mates, you will see David standing aside with his family. (He's not even in the first team at this stage—you are the famous one.) And he has such a cute smile," Victoria wrote in a letter to her 18-year-old self for British Vogue. "You, too, are close to your family, and you will think how similar he feels to you. He's going to ask for your number."
And he did despite his shyness. In her letter, she even confirmed that he had kept that plane ticket with him through the years. "(He still has the London-to-Manchester plane ticket on which you wrote it)," she stated in her letter. It was love at first for both of them.
In a 2007 interview with W Magazine, when asked how they first met, David replied, "She stalked me." At the arch of her eyebrows though, he said, "I fancied her." But interestingly enough, the 44-year-old English soccer player actually knew she was the one far before he met her in person.
He recalled to the magazine that he had been watching TV after a match with his Manchester United teammate Gary Neville late in 1996 when a Spice Girls video came on. He saw Victoria in a catsuit and was smitten on the spot. "I turned around to Gary and said, 'That one there, that's the girl I'm going to marry.'"
Then in February 1997, when "Posh Spice" attended a game in London with one of her bandmates, he had a chance to put himself out there but he blew it in the player's lounge. "I'm quite shy," he admits. "I just sort of waved from the other side of the bar." Even after he was properly introduced to her, he couldn't work up the nerve to ask her out. "I sort of said hello and then just went back to Manchester," the soccer player recalled. "I was quite upset and gutted."
Luckily, the father-of-four was provided with another chance when at another game a week later, he found out that two of the Spice Girls were in the stadium. "And I'm thinking, Please let it be Posh," David remembered. Well, it was and it was this meeting that Victoria fondly remembered and mentioned in her letter to her 18-year-old self. He rang her the next day, "very nervous", and drove down to see her in London that night. Soon enough, they started dating, rapidly earning the title of a "power couple" and were married on September 1999, four months after the birth of their first child, Brooklyn.
According to The Sun, when David found out he was going to be a father, he said, "I went to the tiny toilet on the team coach and just jumped up and down hugging myself."
Before they knew it, their family of three turned into a family of six as they brought into their world their three more children — Romeo, Harper, and Cruz, according to Harper's Bazaar. The love the couple shared only grew with their children and it doesn't look like it's going to slow down. Especially as the couple recently celebrated their 20th wedding anniversary on their own with some time away from the kids. Victoria told Metro UK, "We talked and laughed the whole time, and not even about the kids or work." It's obvious that the spark that brought them together definitely stayed alive throughout the years.
References:
https://www.eonline.com/ap/news/1054357/how-david-and-victoria-beckham-s-marriage-survived-and-thrived-after-scandal
https://www.vogue.co.uk/article/victoria-beckham-vogue-interview
https://www.wmagazine.com/story/beckhams-steven-klein?currentPage=2
https://www.thesun.co.uk/tvandshowbiz/9402310/david-beckham-victoria-love-at-first-sight-wedding-anniversary/
https://www.harpersbazaar.com/celebrity/latest/g22036168/victoria-beckham-david-beckham-relationship-timeline/?slide=41
https://metro.co.uk/2019/09/14/victoria-beckham-feared-marriage-david-amid-20-year-wedding-anniversary-10743002/
