Pilot Marries Woman After Helping Fly Her Dog Home (Exclusive)

Finding love with a German pilot was the last thing Adri Pendleton expected after a breakup and a struggle to get her elderly dog back home to California from the Netherlands.

But less than a year after that ordeal, which went viral on social media, Pendleton and the pilot, Niklas Stöterau, have said “I do” — twice.

Here’s how it happened: Pendleton, 29, and Stöterau, 26, first met when he came to her border collie Nelly’s rescue. Romance blossomed, and the couple then wed in Gibraltar, a picturesque British overseas territory near Spain, on Aug. 20.

Part of the reason for their nuptials was so they could then move to Switzerland, where Stöterau now works for Swiss International Air Lines.

“We talked to an immigration lawyer who said we needed to be married if we wanted to live together in Switzerland,” explains Pendleton, who is studying to become a dog behaviorist and has been documenting parts of her life on TIkTok.

“We knew we wanted to get married,” she says, “so there was no real reason to delay, and we didn’t want to be separated.”

There was only one problem, the couple says: Right after Pendleton and Stöterau arrived for the wedding in August, officials said that his birth certificate, the one he’d been using since he was a child, was not actually an original copy as was required.

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They had already booked a photographer and hotels, and Stöterau’s parents were there, so they went ahead with the ceremony and exchanged rings, topping it off with a wedding dinner.

“We [weren’t] legally married, but we decided we’re still going to do all that,” Pendleton says now.

She figured, “We’ll be married in spirit and we’re just going to do the legal part later on, which we did.”

The couple chose to get married in Europe because Stöterau is doing training for a new pilot job in Switzerland, so the time he can take away from his job is limited. The couple had flown to Gibraltar expecting smooth sailing — and even Stöterau’s father was surprised to learn his birth certificate was not an original.

But they didn’t faze them.

“We were not going to just give up, we were going to make it work,” Pendleton says.

Stöterau agrees: “We don’t give up so easily.”

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The planning for their Swiss ceremony had been something of a logistical feat. That reminded the couple of a Grey’s Anatomy episode in which characters Derek and Meredith are similarly stymied by unforeseen events in their attempt to get to their own courthouse wedding.

In the episode, Derek and Meredith decide to write what they wanted to say to each other in their vows on Post-Its to exchange at work.

Stöterau suggested to a distraught Pendleton that they do the same.

“I was like, why don’t we do that? We’ll just have a Post-It wedding,” Stöterau says. “So we wrote down something on a piece of paper.”

In their joint interview with PEOPLE, Pendleton laughs and says “it was very cheesy” — as Stöterau quickly adds, ”Yeah, it was very cheesy, but we thought it was also very cute.”

A few weeks later, on Sept. 12, the couple made their marriage official with a smaller scale courthouse ceremony in Redding, Calif. The two arrived wearing matching gray suits and with several of Pendleton’s relatives, including her mom, stepdad and brother, in tow.

The second wedding allowed her mom, whom Pendleton described as being “very emotional” and her brother, also a pilot, to attend.

“It was very simple, very cute. He had a purple tie and I had purple nails and earrings,” Pendleton says. “We were adorable.”

How Her Dog Helped Play Matchmaker

Their whirlwind romance started after Pendleton, who had been living in Amsterdam, called it quits with her partner of six years, in late 2023. But she ran into trouble when she discovered her elderly dog, Nelly, could not safely fly on a commercial flight back to the U.S.

In early November, Stöterau randomly saw an emotional TikTok that Pendleton posted asking for assistance.

“I felt quite touched and left a comment that I might be able to help with bringing Nelly back to the U.S.,” Stöterau told PEOPLE in April.

The two connected from there. At first, they were just friends. But something sparked in January, when Pendleton and Nelly met up with Stöterau for the first time just before their flight out of Europe.

“I told him on the plane, when we first met, I was excited to be moving back to the sunshine in California,” Pendleton says. Stöterau told her, “Well, Switzerland is nice.”

After the two parted ways once arriving in Newark, N.J.,, they both started thinking about each other. 

“A couple of days after the flight, I said, ‘You’re very impressive. If you keep this up, I’m going to invite you to California and take you on a date,’ ” Pendleton says. “I mean, it was clear that we were both interested in each other.” (Stöterau agrees but notes, “I was happy she made that first step.”)

When he came to see her in California in March, the two knew it was the real deal.

“It felt so easy and right. People had told me, ‘Sometimes you just know.’ And I never understood that until I met him,” Pendleton says. “He just makes me stupidly happy all the time.”

“I wouldn’t  know how to describe it,” Stöterau says before catching himself.

“No. I do — it’s content.”

Just before they were married, Stöterau’s dad sent Pendleton a text: “I just love seeing the change in Nick since he met you, seeing how happy the relationship with you makes him.”

“I thought it was so sweet, and I’m sure my parents would say the exact same thing,” Pendleton tells PEOPLE.

The couple will still be making back-and-forth trips until everything is finalized around Christmas, they say. They would love to purchase a home in Switzerland, although both say it is even more expensive than California.

Still, they dream of a small farm with chickens and ducks and Pendleton’s dog, Loki. (Nelly, whom Pendleton previously told PEOPLE was “the ultimate wingman,” lived for another month or so after returning to Christmas.)

Pendleton says she plans on keeping up with her TikTok postings about the relationship.

There are still some obstacles, including her chronic disease, which can flare up in cold weather. But that doesn’t dim the couple’s joy.

“We’re very excited just to be able to live together. We aren’t having a honeymoon anything soon, but just being together feels like a honeymoon,” Pendleton says. “We are just very happy to have found each other.”