“So many people,” says Daniel Solomon, “spend their entire lives not meeting the perfect person for them and either staying alone or settling for someone.”

But not him.

“I really feel I was one of the lucky ones who met their perfect partner,” he tells PEOPLE in his first interview about his wife, Sarah Best , “and she felt the same.”

Solomon, 57, teaches classical studies at Vanderbilt University. Best, 33, was a teacher-turned-attorney. They’d been married for a little more than six years when, in January, she texted him while flying home from Wichita, Kan., to Washington, D.C. , after a work trip.

“I love you,” she wrote that night, before turning off her phone. “I LOVE YOU,” he responded. That was the last thing they said to each other.

Just after 8:45 p.m. on Jan. 29, Best’s

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