"I've come to Antarctica to find a husband," Nicole McGrath told Cole Heinz, mock serious.

Heinz laughed. The two were eating lunch at McMurdo Station, a US research facility built on volcanic rock on Ross Island, surrounded by mountains, snow and ice.

It was 2013. McGrath, then 25, had graduated college in the midst of the recession, she was unsure what she wanted to do and job prospects were grim.

When she heard that the US government employed people to work in dining and janitorial roles at McMurdo, McGrath was intrigued and immediately applied.

It was a couple of years before she was accepted, but then before she knew it, McGrath was boarding a military flight from New Zealand to the planet's southernmost continent.

"Who gets to say they go to Antarctica?" McGrath tells CNN Travel today. "That's just like something I've never even heard of. I'm from Florida originally, so I'd never even lived anywhere cold ever."

Upon arrival, she was informed of her duties as a dining attendant: working the galley, washing dishes and serving food for the McMurdo team.

Heinz, a McMurdo veteran who'd just turned 29, was set to train McGrath, along with several other new recruits. He recalls the moment he first saw her.

"I walked in, and I was just like, 'Woah,'" he says.

McGrath was equally taken with Heinz.

"I remember like seeing this redheaded Texan with a baseball cap and just being like, 'Oh, he's cute,'" says McGrath.

Still, she was only kidding about heading to Antarctica to husband-hunt, her joke referred to the fact McMurdo was roughly 75% men.

The two strangers quickly realized they shared this dry sense of humor.

"I think what drew us to each other that first day was that we joked around a lot, and we made each other laugh," says McGrath.

There were other new recruits joining that day, and McMurdo was always a hive of activity. It was hard to find much privacy. But McGrath and Heinz happened to eat lunch alone on day one.

"We had kind of our own little -- not really a date -- but just a little private lunch together that first day," says Heinz.

As McGrath settled into her work, she found herself comparing McMurdo's atmosphere to that of a college campus. Everyone lived in dorms. There were organized movie nights and events. There was a friendly, welcoming vibe.

There was also patchy Wi-Fi, communal computers and no cell phone signal, so connections were forged quickly and strongly.

"They're really big on community there, because everyone is in the same position, you're 10,000 miles away from home and family," says Heinz.

The only downside of the buzzy environment was it was difficult to be alone with a potential love interest. But amid their busy work days, Heinz and McGrath found time to chat one on one, with Heinz often stopping by McGrath's work station in the dining room.

On day three of her Antarctic adventure, McGrath asked Heinz out on their first official date. She suggested they hike to Hut Point to see the abandoned Discovery Hut, once used by British explorer Robert F. Scott during a 1901-1904 Antarctic expedition, and later by Ernest Shackleton.

"It's just exactly the way it was over 100 years ago, because of the cold and the lack of humidity, everything's perfectly preserved," explains McGrath.

The two chatted the whole way, marveling at the spectacular, ethereal landscape as they carved a path in the snow.

"It's like this very beautiful, cold, desolate place," says McGrath, recalling the icy terrain.

Back at McMurdo, the two headed to the coffee house and spent the rest of the day chatting and playing board games together. They shared their first kiss, and were inseparable from that day forward.

"That was that," says McGrath.