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Love is unpredictable in when, and where, you find it. 

Just ask Newlyweds Latoya and Giovanni Govia, who found each other at the Suffolk Family Y.M.C.A. in 2016, while exercising on the treadmill. On Thursday, Oct. 24, the Govias tied the knot during a private ceremony at the very place they met, which made for a unique and happy wedding with friends, family, and plenty of gym spectators. During a Friday, Nov. 1 interview, one week and one day after giving their vows, the couple discussed the day they met and their unconventional wedding.

Giovanni detailed his version of meeting Latoya Jones. An avid runner, he says he was doing three 30s – running three 30 segments while pausing twice for two minutes breaks each.

“…and I don’t know when she came on the treadmill next to me, and I was running on the treadmill. I was doing my 30 minutes. She’s probably running about two miles or whatever, and we just got done at the same time,” Giovanni said. “And she said, ‘Why are you coughing? You have asthma?’ I was like, ‘I don’t have asthma! That’s nearly four miles in three minutes. A person with asthma can’t do that!’ And she was like, ‘Well, you could have conditional asthma.’ I’m like, ‘Well, you look like you can do another mile.’ …and then she got back on the treadmill and did another mile. But while she was running the mile, I was telling her, ‘Hey, you don’t have to go fast, you just don’t stop.’ And that was it.”

Giovanni says they didn’t see each other until the following Sunday, where he was working out in the gym. He recounted when Latoya came by the gym.

“I was like, ‘Hey, so what happened? Did that mile kill you?’ She was like, ‘Were you looking for me?’ I was like, ‘No, I wasn’t looking for you. It’s just that people that come to the gym normally come at a certain time, especially people that’s working’ or whatever,” Giovanni said. “And so the conversation started then, and then, that was it.”

Detailing her version, Latoya says everything was the same regarding how they met.

“I didn’t know how long he was running before I got on the treadmill. It was just an open treadmill, walking on a treadmill. Actually, I didn’t even look at how he looked. It wasn’t like ‘Oh, I am attracted to this dude, so let me run next to him,’ type of thing. It was just an open treadmill. And the treadmill stopped at the same time,” Latoya humorously reflected. “I did say to him, ‘I thought he was sick,’ because he coughs while he runs and he coughed the entire run, and it was disturbing me! And so I asked him whether or not he was sick, and so all of that happened.”

She reflected on asking Giovanni if he was looking for her on that Sunday.

“In my mind, that means somebody’s looking for you if they didn’t notice you weren’t there. So that’s where our little, we always had a little difference, comes in,” she said. “But the first day we saw each other, we didn’t exchange numbers, so the second time that we saw each other is when we actually exchanged numbers. And I asked him for his phone number because he didn’t ask me, which was crazy. I was like, ‘Dang! You’re not even going to ask me for my number? You’re going to make me ask you?”

Latoya says from there, things moved really fast, moving in with each other three weeks later. This led to seven years of dating – with a break in 2023 and reconnecting in 2024 – and finally their marriage at the Suffolk Family Y.M.C.A. in October. The gym and fitness center’s Oct. 24 Facebook post stated that “We couldn’t be happier to celebrate this beautiful moment with Latoya and Giovanni Govia, showing how the Y is where not only fitness goals are met, but lifelong commitments are made. Congratulations to the happy couple!” While Latoya originally wanted to have the ceremony at their house, Giovanni thought about having it at the Suffolk Y.M.C.A. due to being where they met. After Latoya reached out to the center, the couple had the Y’s full support, with a photographer, videographer and more. On the wedding ceremony itself, Latoya described the experience as “a little bit out of body.”

“We’re both really, like, laid back people. We’re not ‘in the limelight’ type of people, but I didn’t realize the gym was going to be, like, open. So it was an open gym. And so people were in there working out,” Latoya said with a laugh. “People were running on the other treadmills that were a little further down from the ones we got married on. I mean, everything came together really well.”

She continued. 

“I didn’t want to wear a dress or anything like that. So, I purchased his tuxedo hoodie and I made my own hoodie, like with the flowers and the decoration, had a veil, had a bouquet as you would with a traditional wedding ceremony. And then, I just decorated the treadmills. So it was nice. I love the pictures.”

Giovanni said the experience was “kind of surreal.” 

“At the end of the ceremony, the whole gym just clapped. People on the treadmill started hearing this stuff, you know what I mean? Like, they were part of the ceremony, unwillingly, right? They came to work out. They didn’t know there was going to be a wedding,” he said. “And so, people doing their workouts now around the ceremony, trying to be quiet, without even asking them, right? And then at the end, when the officiant said ‘I now pronounce you man and wife and for the first time, [I] introduce you all to Mr. and Mrs. Govia,’ the whole gym just started clapping.”

Latoya detailed their friends and family’s reaction to wanting to get married at the Y.M.C.A.

“The reaction from everybody was pretty much the same. It was kind of like, ‘Are you serious?’ And then, when I told them it was a treadmill and then when I told them we were wearing hoodies, they were like, ‘That’s different,’” she reflected. “I mean, everybody’s feedback was very positive, but it was just like, ‘Okay, if anybody’s gonna do that, it’s gonna be Giovanni and Latoya,’ because we do different stuff all the time.”

Finally, both talked each other’s personalities. Latoya calls Giovanni “a man of his word” who makes things happen when he says he will.

“…He’s very, very, very carefree. Which I love, because I tend to be an overthinker, an overanalyzer, because that’s actually what I do on my day job. And when I am around him, I am able to just relax, let my hair down, not ride on myself. Like, I can say and do pretty much whatever I want to say and do and he doesn’t, like, take offense to it or overthink it, or anything like that. He just kind of takes it for what it is,” Latoya said. “He’s super smart. I call him ‘Google.’ So, I sometimes don’t even ask Google. I ask him, because I already know he already knows the answer!”

Giovanni calls Latoya “very organized.”

“She gives her all in everything that she do. She’s very artistic, and just like in making the wedding happen, all I had to do was say, ‘Hey, I think that this should happen,’ and she’ll call me back without me suggesting it. She’ll take that as a suggestion, or what we say in the military, ‘for action,’ and she go figure it out…And I find that to really, I help the relationship move smoother than it would otherwise, right? The fact that we kind of gauge each other,” Giovanni said. “We are not extreme at either end of the spectrum, right? We’re not extreme at all. So it’s easy for us to find that happy medium and just move along… Like, I’m a laugher. I’m a jokester, she’s a jokester, but you wouldn’t know she’s a jokester unless she’s around me, right? So I think our personalities are intertwined to the point where we are sometimes the same person. You know what I mean?”

The Govias are planning to have their honeymoon trip in Antigua, where Giovanni is from, for Christmas and New Years.