Danit Naomi Aronson and Taro Kimura were college sweethearts after they met at Tufts at the end of 1998. Two decades later they got together again when she reached out after seeing him as a recommended connection on the professional networking website LinkedIn.
“She was creative-looking, wore bright colors and had a lot of energy,” said Mr. Kimura, 41, who was a year ahead of her, and first noticed her in the cafeteria in the uphill part of campus, and then they met at a party and began dating.
She spent her junior year studying in Paris while he was a senior. After each graduated from Tufts, she cum laude, he moved to San Francisco, where he received a master’s degree in electrical engineering from Santa Clara University, and she returned to Paris for another year and a half before settling in New York.
“He was definitely my first love,’’ said Ms. Aronson, 40, but they eventually lost touch. “Each of us had our full complete lives. We traveled the world and dated, but neither of us found the right person.”
In 2017, they reconnected on LinkedIn, and a couple of months later he asked her to dinner at Perra, a restaurant near her TriBeCa loft while visiting friends in New York.
“I had butterflies,” she said when she first saw him. They were the last to leave the restaurant. The pair then had drinks at Brandy Library nearby, and later their first kiss, again.
“All the memories came rushing back,’’ she said. “It was a second first kiss.”
A month later, after she spent a week at the Burning Man festival with friends, she said she was “all dusty and not glamorous” when they met in Lake Tahoe, Nev. She then went to San Francisco with him for a few days.
“It was like being in a bubble,’’ Mr. Kimura said. “The real world melted away.”
By the end of the year their relationship grew more serious after they spent Thanksgiving together in New York, and then she spent Christmas with him and his family — his parents from San Francisco and relatives from Japan — in Maui, Hawaii.
Two years later, in November 2019, he proposed on a beach in Tulum, Mexico.
Ms. Aronson, who is taking the groom’s name, is the chief partnership officer overseeing business development and new client relationships for North America at CSM, a brand experience marketing agency in New York. Mr. Kimura, now based in New York, is the principal technical program manager focusing on audio for Alexa Echo products at Amazon Lab126 in Sunnyvale, Calif.
They planned to marry on Aug. 15 at her college roommate’s farmhouse in Mallorca, Spain, before the coronavirus hit. They were legally married July 7 in their loft in TriBeCa by Cantor Theodore L. Aronson, the bride’s father, via Zoom.
On June 20, her father led an in-person Jewish ceremony, incorporating Japanese elements, with her mother, brother and some close friends at the couple’s loft. About 300 friends and family, who were asked to wear formal attire, watched on Zoom from places including Japan, London, France, Haiti and Morocco. And from Florida: her 93-year-old maternal grandmother whom she calls “grand-mere.”
The groom’s uncle led a toast from Tokyo, and origami cranes made by the groom’s niece and nephew decorated the huppah built by Mr. Kimura. The bride’s brother, Noah, played piano and sang various tunes. Some virtual guests participated with sparklers and mini bottles of Champagne included in handmade wooden boxes sent earlier by the couple. Guests danced the hora, and then went into the courtyard where they cheered essential workers at 7 p.m. along with neighbors.
Later a socially distanced group, serenaded by a trumpeter and drummer, walked New Orleans-style with bubble wands to Pier 25 along the Hudson River, where they watched the sunset with Champagne and slices of Joe’s Pizza.
A few guests stayed at the loft to toast Ms. Aronson’s 40th birthday with cupcakes and more Champagne at midnight. “After all this time getting married to Taro was the best birthday gift ever,” she said.
