Love takes flight: Abilene couple’s first date ended in a plane crash, but led to 26 years of marriage

ABILENE, Texas (KTAB/KRBC) — In 1996, it was love at first flight — or crash — for the Countess couple, leading to more than 26 years of love and three daughters.

Chad and Jan Countess met in Abilene when Chad was stationed at Dyess Air Force Base, and Jan was a student at Hardin-Simmons University. They met each other in a small group at First Baptist Church, and Chad said that when he saw her, he knew Jan was the one.

“The first time I saw her, I kind of knew. I just had that look, love at first sight,” Chad said. “I did tell my friends. I said, ‘I think I found the girl I’m going to marry.'”

So, after taking some test runs with other people in their church group, he came up with a plan to ask Jan to go flying with him. When it came time to ask Jan, she said yes, and the flight started off smoothly; however, things quickly changed.

“I just remember him saying, ‘We’re going down, and I ain’t kiddin’,” Jan said. “He did tell me to wear pants. That’s the rule. That in case you crash land, and you have to run through all kinds of stuff.”

The plane crashed at Lake Fort Phantom Hill, but that wasn’t the end of the excitement.

“It smelled like fuel was leaking, and then we’re in a little junkyard. These two German Shepherds started chasing us. As we got through the plane crash and just certainly ran for the fence,” Chad said. “That’s really what started our relationship; it crashed us together.”

Despite the situation, Jan wasn’t as shaken as one might expect.

“I don’t guess I realized the severity of it here already on our flight to broad over my parent’s place, he had already said something about ‘It’s so flat out here, if he had to have a crash landing, it would be okay, as opposed to a mountain area,” Jan said. “I don’t know. I think he had already been preparing me for everything.”

Chad, meanwhile, was still processing the crash when Jan surprised him with her next priority.

“I was like, ‘Oh, I can’t believe that just happened.’ She’s like, ‘I have a volleyball game.’ She got a ride with one of the reporters somewhere to the YMCA,” Chad recalled.

Their second date? A trip back to the crash site the next day to take pictures.

After about a year of dating, Chad spontaneously took Jan on a trip to Washington, D.C., the same day as Princess Diana’s Crash, when he popped the big question, and she said yes. After getting married at Hardin-Simmons, the true turbulence began in their relationship when Chad was gone on deployments.

“Lots and lots of deployments to Iraq, Afghanistan. All of a sudden, we were raising three outstanding girls and running a business back home,” Chad said. “After 9/11, it’s like your active duty because your active duty at the time for the wars and left the job for a few months to come home and do your business and send you back in.”

Back home, Jan leaned on the support of her family during that time and the advancement of modern communication over the years.

“It was hard, stressful. But it’s funny, when he first was deployed, even when we were dating or whatever, you had to connect on the AOL, and you didn’t always get the connection,” Jan said. “In the 90’s, there was email, it was a calling card, and now I have to dial a pay phone from England. The second deployment email came out and it’d be a long line of soldiers waiting to get on the computer to email their wives. And then the Skype came out and then the face time on the iPhone.”

They will be celebrating 27 years of marriage in April.