Love is a many-splendored thing, especially when you’re gawking at it from the outside. In this column, we’ll be examining the celebrity couples that give us hope for our own romantic futures and trying to learn what we can from their well-documented bonds.

I am, to put it mildly, not a sports person and never have been—I was more of a “sitting on the sidelines, making daisy chains while the rest of your softball team screams at you at the top of their lungs” kind of third grader—but that doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate it when someone is at the top of their game. Just take Argentine soccer star (and birthday boy!) Lionel Messi, whose two goals against Austria this week made him the all-time leading scorer in World Cup history. Even I recognize the man from his picture alone, which generally doesn’t happen to me with pro athletes unless they happen to have dated either a Kardashian or one Taylor Swift. Yet it’s very possibly Messi’s personal life that intrigues me even more than his talents on the pitch.

Messi—who recently received a warm welcome Stateside after joining Inter Miami—has been married to his wildly fab WAG, model Antonela Roccuzzo, since 2017, and according to Hello! magazine, the newly minted Floridians have a love story straight out of a Nicholas Sparks novel. The two met in Argentina when they were only five years old, staying in touch even after Messi moved to Barcelona at the age of 13. The Summer I Turned Pretty vibes, anyone?

Roccuzzo and Messi’s 2017 wedding, dubbed Argentina’s wedding of the century by the press, was held in their hometown of Rosario, and involved no less a musical luminary than Shakira(!), as well as a private security firm hired to keep out wedding crashers. (I’m told that several soccer stars of Messi’s standing were also in attendance, but...sorry to these men, I don’t recognize them at all.)

Naturally, googling Messi and Roccuzzo yields some truly deranged headlines, such as one from the Daily Mail that suggests the couple’s 2023 trip to a Publix supermarket was (gasp) staged. This is too stupid for me to even comprehend, but I have definitely unlocked a new goal: to look so hot while simply buying groceries with my partner that it spawns literal conspiracy theories about who, in fact, is paying us. (Frankly, if anyone out there is keen to pay me and a partner to buy groceries—or just pay for the groceries themselves—we would surely be open to negotiations.)

Messi doesn’t talk at length about his relationship with Roccuzzo, but I like the answer he gave about their bond all the way back in 2009, years before they were married or had kids. When asked on a soccer news show if he had a girlfriend, Messi responded: “Yes, I have a girlfriend. She is in Argentina. The truth is that I am well and I am relaxed.” I’m kind of obsessed with the brevity of this answer—yes, I have a girlfriend; yes, she’s in Argentina; and yes, I’m in my prime. We stan a well, relaxed king!