North London lovebirds who met as pupils at Immanuel College in Bushey have got engaged. And to propose to Zoe Margolin, Sammy Kingston returned to the school where it all began.

“I moved to Immanuel from Yavneh when I was in Year 9,” Sammy, 26,recalls. I was 14, and on the first day I met Zoe, who was then 13. We hit it off from the start.”

In 2011, the pair went on Immanuel’s Israel trip and their friendship deepened. The following year they “started going out properly”.

Sammy left Immanuel at 16 to take up an apprenticeship with a real estate company and now works for VTS in Soho, selling property software.

Zoe stayed on and then studied early childhood education at the University of Hertfordshire. But before she finished her university course, the couple broke up and were apart for 18 months. However, they kept bumping into each other — Sammy lives in Mill Hill, Zoe in Elstree — and in 2019, “we decided to get together again officially”.

Proposal

Sammy proposing to Zoe in Immanuel college

By the time of the proposal, Zoe was back at Immanuel College, working as a teaching assistant for Year 5 classes. He wanted to go back to where they first met, the school’s rather unromantically named “B Block corridor”.

Having played futsal at the Maccabiah Games, Sammy told Zoe that he was visiting to give a presentation to Immanuel students about his sporting life and asked her to come to the school on a Sunday to watch.

She agreed, making her way to B Block — decorated for the day with balloons reading “Marry Me” — and an attentive Sammy, waiting on her answer. Happily, she said yes, and the couple now hope to marry next summer.

Sammy admitted that all their friends believed they would end up together, despite their 18-month break. “It’s beshert — fate,” he declared.