In 2006, Bryan Fleury and Millie Malave were on the cover of POZ as part of a feature story on finding love while living with HIV. They are both HIV positive.

Back then, Bryan and Millie were celebrating their third anniversary. Ten years later, they say their love is stronger than ever. For this Valentine’s Day, POZ caught up with the happy couple.  

Tell us about how you met.

Millie: Bryan was actually the first guy I met at any function I went to for HIV-positive people. It was 2003, and I was seeing a therapist because I was going through a divorce after 20 years of marriage. I thought that at my age, I was going to die lonely without meeting anybody.

She gave me a flyer for this Valentine’s Day party at Positive Connections [an organization supporting heterosexual people living with HIV]. I was supposed to go to the party with another friend of mine, but she backed out at the last minute. I almost backed out too, but I had already bought myself a bottle of booze and I was already dressed, so I said, “What the heck, let me go and mingle.”

So I go, and I see all these healthy-looking people having fun. I was like, “OK, this is not too bad!” Then I meet this very confident, very handsome guy. We danced all night, and Bryan kept telling me about all of these HIV-positive cruises he’d been on through Positive Connections. I remember he told me, “You know what, if you ever want to go to one, I’m the one person you should go with because I’m going to guarantee you’re going to have a good time.”

Bryan: I don’t know how, but I knew deep down in my heart that I was going to hit the love lottery that night. I remember there were about 200 people at this party — the place was packed — but there was one seat available, and the most gorgeous woman I had ever seen in my life was sitting next to that empty seat. I went right to that seat and we started talking.

We danced all night and had a great time. Millie was the sexiest Latin dancer I’d ever seen. I remember she tried teaching me at one point, and finally said, “Just hold onto my hips.” As a white guy, I had only mastered the two-step. But I also remember she told me she was in the process of going through a divorce. That kind of put up a red flag for me, so I never asked for her phone number that night. At the end of the dance, she went her way, I went mine, and I regretted that so much.

How did you reconnect?

Bryan: A few months later Positive Connections went to Amsterdam. I spent the whole time in coffee shops telling my friends that I was on a mission to meet this woman named Millie again, and that I’d go to every New York City function to find her. But when I came home from the trip, there was a message on my answering machine. It was from Millie. She had never stopped thinking about me either.

Millie: It took me three months to work up the nerve to call this girl at Positive Connections to see if she remembered me. And she said, “Remember you? We just came back from Amsterdam and all Bryan talked about was this girl named Millie!” If I hadn’t heard it from her and Bryan had told me his story first, I would have said he was BS-ing. But she confirmed it, so I called him.

Bryan: After that, we talked on the phone every night for hours. It was crazy. We laughed, we got to know each other, and then finally in June, Millie got enough nerve up to get on the train and come see me in Massachusetts.

Millie: I spent the night and I went home the next day, and we’ve been inseparable ever since.

And now you’ve been together for 13 years! Did you ever end up going on that cruise together?

Bryan: We’ve actually been on eight Positive Connections cruises together so far. We’ve been to the Caribbean, the Mexican Riviera, Alaska. We’ve done our fair share of traveling together.

Millie: The first cruise we went on together was the best one. Bryan was hesitant to go at first because it’s seven days stuck together with people that you don’t really know that well. I remember he told me, “If you want to go out there and feel other people out, it’s OK,” but once we got together, we never separated.

How has living with HIV affected your health and your relationship?

Millie: When I was first diagnosed in 1994, I didn’t tell anybody. I actually had two brothers who died of AIDS — one in ’95 and one in ’96 — so I didn’t want to burden my family members with knowing I was positive. During that time I was married, and I had just had my third daughter. I also had been working at Mount Sinai Hospital as a nurse for over 20 years, so I saw what the early AIDS epidemic was like up front: the fever of unknown origins, patients withering away, the doctors being afraid to touch the patients.

I suffered from anxiety and depression and I kept my diagnosis to myself until I wound up with PCP pneumonia. At the time, I had 6 T-cells and I could hardly breathe — I practically had one leg in the grave. But I found this wonderful doctor and he told me he was going to take care of me. I’m actually still seeing him today. I’ve been undetectable for years.

Bryan: I was 25 years old when I was diagnosed, and back then [in 1991], being a hetero man with HIV was very difficult for me. I got divorced, and for the first 10 years, I lived in isolation. After I went onto treatment, I quickly got lipodystrophy. It got to the point where I couldn’t even stand the sight of myself in the mirror.

I lost all courage to leave my house, driving to other towns just to get gasoline, groceries or go to the bank. There was a point that I actually stopped taking the medication because of the damage that was going on in my body, and that caused me to get PCP. I also almost died of a heart attack.

But since Millie and I have been together, we’ve hardly lost a T-cell. Right now, my health is great. And luckily, about three years ago, Medicare started covering a new treatment for lipo called Sculptra, and let me tell you, it’s been a blessing.

Millie: We try to eat healthy, and we try to work out at the gym as much as possible when we don’t have any aches and pains. I’m also seven and a half years older than Bryan, so I want to make sure I keep myself in shape, you know?

Bryan, you live in Massachusetts, and Millie, you live in New York City. How do you make your long-distance relationship work?

Millie: We commute back and forth, and we don’t miss a day without calling at least once or twice. He has a house in Massachusetts and his mother needs a lot of help. And I’m very close to my sisters and my brother and my 21-year-old daughter, who still lives with me. So during the year, I visit Massachusetts more often than not. During the summer, he travels to New York back and forth. We’ve not had a problem so far.

Bryan: We always rent a cabana at a pool club in Queens, so our summers are always spent in New York City. We know how much absence makes the heart grow fonder. Also, in 13 years, I don’t think we ever went a month without seeing each other.

Millie: (Laughs) I think three weeks is the longest we’ve gone. But we’ve got the phone and we’ve got FaceTime and we know we love each other, so it works for us.

Do you two do any HIV community work together?

Bryan: My calling in life now is as a prevention educator. I volunteer my time at high schools across the state to share my story and help kids along the way. This is actually my 15th school year doing it.

I share with them what happened to my face and the side effects, what happened to my body, and then I tell them about the best thing that ever happened to me. That’s when I pull out the POZ magazine from 10 years ago, and there’s a beautiful picture of Millie and me on the cover.

Millie: Activism is Bryan’s forte. I’m more on the shy side and I don’t really like speaking in groups. But I donate and I go to the AIDS Walk with him. I was lucky that I met Bryan, because he is very outgoing, he’s very caring, and I couldn’t have met a better partner.

What are your plans for the future?

Millie: We’re just taking it day by day. People always ask us when we are going to get married, but we’ve both been married before, so that’s not something that we’re looking for. We just plan to see where God takes us.

Bryan: When you’re a long-term survivor, anything can happen. So if one of us were to ever get severely sick, we’d be there at the drop of a hat to take care of each other. But we don’t plan on changing what’s been working so far.

In the future, we have to have hope that there’s going to be a cure in our lifetime, but in the meantime, at least we know that true love does exist. We’re positive proof of that.

Inspired by Bryan and Millie’s story? POZ Personals is the fastest-growing online dating community for people living with HIV. Click here to connect.