Chaya Yvonne Crowder and Braxton Earl Cook were married Sept. 21 at the River Mill in French Camp, Calif. The Rev. Kevin K. Ross, the senior minister of Unity of Sacramento, officiated.
The bride, 27, is a doctoral candidate in American politics at Princeton, from which she received a master’s degree in political science. She graduated from Columbia, from which she also received a second master’s degree, also in political science.
She is a daughter of Phyllis A. Marshall and Charles P. Crowder of Sacramento, and a stepdaughter of Millard F. Hampton. The bride’s father retired as a senior real estate appraiser for the city of San Francisco. Her mother is the chief legislative representative at Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors. The bride’s stepfather retired from the San Jose Police Force; he was also on the 1976 United States Olympic team, winning a gold medal, as part of the 4×100-meter relay team, and a silver in the individual 200 meters at the Summer Games in Montreal.
Mr. Cook, 28, is a jazz musician, an alto saxophonist and vocalist, who is based in New York. He graduated from the Juilliard School in New York.
He is a son of Traci Lynn Cook and Anthony Earl Cook of Silver Spring, Md. The groom’s mother is a public health analyst at the Center for Disease Control in Washington. His father is a professor of law at Georgetown.
The couple met in October 2012 at a party on the Columbia campus, where Ms. Crowder was starting her junior year. Mr. Cook, who was starting his sophomore year at Juilliard, had gone to the party immediately after his first concert at Lincoln Center.
“I was still on a high and pumping with adrenaline when I approached Chaya at that party,” Mr. Braxton said.
As Mr. Braxton went over to introduce himself, Ms. Crowder stood there with her arms folded, a clear signal that she was not in the mood to socialize. “I had recently ended a relationship and didn’t want to date anymore,” she said. “I certainly did not want to go to that party.”
But she was talked into going by her twin sister, Chelsea, who was also a junior at Columbia.
Mr. Cook, still brimming with confidence, sped through Ms. Crowder’s stop sign and asked her to dance. “I loved her studious eyebrows and intelligent aura,” he said. “She looked like a real challenge — and someone who would challenge me.”
Ms. Crowder agreed to dance, and “to the extent that you can learn about someone when yelling in each other’s ears on a dance floor, I had learned enough to want to learn more about Braxton,” she said.
“He was so polite,” Ms. Crowder added. “I remember thinking to myself at the time that it took a lot of courage for him to approach me under those circumstances.”
A few days later, Hurricane Sandy struck. School was shut down for several days and parts of the city’s subway system had closed, but Mr. Cook was still open for a first date, which took place at a Chinese restaurant on the Upper West Side.
A week later, they went on a second date to Dizzy’s Club, a jazz club in Lincoln Center, where Ms. Crowder was introduced to musicians, bartenders, waitresses, staff and students who were all a part of Mr. Cook’s world.
“At that point I thought we had definitely connected,” Mr. Cook said. “I was already thinking that this was the girl I was going to marry.”
By January 2013, they were dating steadily.
“Through his pure love and dedication to jazz music, Braxton gave me the confidence to pursue the things in life that I’m passionate about,” Ms. Crowder said.
Mr. Cook so inspired Ms. Crowder that she helped him write the lyrics to his song, “Never Thought,” which include the words, “The good times and the bad, wouldn’t change the world for what we have, because you were there when I needed you, right from the start.”
