A couple is hailing Google Translate as their matchmaker as they fell in love 5,000 miles apart.
Madina and Matthew Harbidge met for the first time when a group of friends gathered in Australia in 2018 and hit it off as people translated for them.
Assuming he would never see Madina again after their first encounter, Matthew, 31, was delighted when he was told she wanted to meet him the next day for coffee.
Madina, 33, returned home to Kazakhstan not long after but the pair kept in touch and had to use Google Translate to message each other every day.
She said of their first meetings: "We were sitting together on the same restaurant table and we didn't talk with each other.
"I didn't know English and he didn't know Kazakh or Russian.
"When I saw him he smiled and I remember his eyes, he looked at me with open eyes and it was a different view for me, I was like 'ok, hello'. And of course, he was looking awesome, I liked this man."
Now happily married since June this year, the pair initially hit a rocky start when they began talking.
Matthew revealed he had said no when Marina first asked him out properly, concerned about how difficult it would be to spend so much time apart.
He said: "I really wanted to make it work but I thought 'this is going to be really bloody hard if we try to do this', that's why I said no to Madina [when she initiated a relationship] and then she was grumpy at me and didn't speak to me for two days.
They eventually managed to learn each other's languages and moved on to video calls in English.
Darwin-based Matthew said: "We fell in love thanks to Google Translate, it helped.
"Our relationship progressed from Google Translate, which was amazing, the translator worked really really well.
The pair didn't officially become an item until later in the year when they met up in Amsterdam. They then dated each other online and saw each other whenever they could, visiting Germany, Kazakstan or Australia.
Matthew added: "Sometimes Russian and English handle context very differently so I had to learn how to write so it translated correctly to Russian and Madina had to do the same thing.
"Otherwise, it was excellent for doing that and we transitioned from writing in each other's languages to phone calls and video calls together."
As their relationship progressed the pair were faced with difficult hurdles like the global coronavirus pandemic and all the travel restrictions that came with it.
Australia's Covid rules were known to be particularly strict and the pair did not see each other for a year and a half.
So successful was the online relationship, that Matthew proposed over a video call while standing on a beach both of them liked.
Eventually, Madina managed to make the move to Australia in 2021, but had to quarantine for two weeks before she was allowed into the country.
The pair revealed the secret to their incredible romance as "doing the hard yards."
Matthew added: "Long distance is really just a temporary thing and in comparison to the rest of your life, is it worth doing the hard yards?
"It will be hard but what's two years of mild unhappiness and doing the hard work to have 50 to a hundred years of happiness with your life partner."
