It's only with hindsight that I look at it and realize that it took me a third of the novel to actually introduce them into a situation that could be called meeting. And there are good and logical reasons to have their adventures before they met. Good thing the story's not a romance. . . .
Though it's one of those things that have me eyeballing the earlier material, because it's so very easy to overestimate how much of the story has to be story, when it could be backstory instead.
But sometimes it's required. And sometimes it requires devising Significant Events for one or the other so as to make it clear that both characters are important. Ah, the delights of juggling POV characters.