Adrienne Ruth Campbell-Holt and Brian Nicholas Lewis are to be married Sept. 2 at St. Ignatius Loyola Church in New York. The Rev. Vincent Biagi, a Roman Catholic priest, is to perform the ceremony.
The bride 38, is a freelance theater director. She is currently the artistic director of Colt Coeur, a Brooklyn-based theater company, and the associate director of the Broadway musical “Dear Evan Hansen.” She graduated summa cum laude from Barnard.
She is a daughter of Meg Campbell and Stephen Holt, both of Boston. The bride’s father is the founder and owner of several websites for readers and authors, including BookGorilla and Kindle Nation Daily. Her mother is the founder and chief of strategy and innovation for the Codman Academy Public School in Dorchester, Mass.
Mr. Lewis, 32, is an actor whose professional stage name is Brian Wiles. He recently portrayed John Aksoy on “Billions,” which airs on Showtime, and Marquis de Lafayette on “Turn,” which airs on the AMC Network. He graduated cum laude from Amherst College and received a master’s in acting from Yale.
He is the son of Mary Tompkins Lewis and Jim Lewis of Manhattan. The groom’s mother is a professor of art history at Trinity College in Hartford, and a contributing art critic for The Wall Street Journal. His father is the managing director at Stonehill Capital Management, a hedge fund in Manhattan.
Ms. Campbell-Holt and Mr. Lewis first met in June 2010 at the Williamstown Theater Festival in Williamstown, Mass. She was casting a new play, and he was auditioning for a role in it as a part of Yale’s resident acting company.
During his audition, he made an unorthodox choice, to precede his monologue with an expletive-filled vocal warm-up.
“I was just trying to loosen up to get my nervousness out,” he said. “Looking back, I guess it was a bit misguided.”
Though he didn’t get the part, Ms. Campbell-Holt said she still found him “intriguing as an actor.”
“I was curious to get to know him more,” she said. “He was very handsome, and I was struck by his originality.”
Later that evening, Ms. Campbell-Holt, who had a boyfriend at the time, walked into the only bar in town and spotted Mr. Lewis “sitting all alone in the corner, all by himself.”
She approached him and tried starting a conversation that, she said, “did not fly.”
“I thought he had zero social skills,” she said.
They went their separate ways, she to Brooklyn, where she lived and worked, and he back to graduate school before moving to the West Village in Manhattan in search of work.
“I had been curious about him over the years,” Ms. Campbell-Holt said. Nevertheless, their paths would not cross again for seven years, until they met on Bumble.
While he was fully aware that Bumble had reconnected him with his one-time casting director, she had no idea. She had been enticed to his profile by the line “Dying alone is greater than dating in New York City,” which Mr. Lewis had written “after going on many, many dates,” he said. “I was burned out.”
He managed to go on one more, a first date at a Manhattan restaurant with Ms. Campbell-Holt. He was waiting outside for her on a cold February night that he did not realize was Valentine’s Day.
When she saw him, she said, “I think I know you.”
But she did not know the new him.
“When we first met, I was just trying to figure out who I was,” Mr. Lewis said. “But I think I was a lot more grown-up at that point, I knew who I was and I knew the kind of person I wanted to date.”
Ms. Campbell-Holt soon realized that she was that person. And this time, he had plenty to say (sans curse words).
“He brought a lot to the conversation this time around, plus I was single, and that made a huge difference,” she said. “I was very excited because I had always had a special feeling about this man.”
They went on eight dates in two weeks before becoming exclusive, and bonded two months later on an eight-day road trip through the Ecuadorean Andes.
“Brian got very physically sick from altitude the first few days we were there,” Ms. Campbell-Holt said. “It was really the worst sort of nonromantic circumstances, and yet we were laughing and having a good time together.”
They were engaged in April.
“He’s just the most fun person I know,” she said. “I love the way he loves me.”
