Eric Wasserman Stern and Evan Michael Zuzik figure they have eaten more than a thousand scoops of ice cream together, at least.
“Our favorite place is Mitchell’s in Cleveland,” said Mr. Stern, where they had lived before moving to Durham, N.C., in 2019. Mr. Stern’s go-to flavors were amaretto cookie, when it was in season, and peanut butter chocolate chunk. Mr. Zuzik (left) always tried something different.
The two met in May 2017 around midnight while dancing with friends at the Twist Social Club, a gay bar on Cleveland’s West Side. Mr. Stern spotted Mr. Zuzik’s neon-colored wristband, which he also had on from an earlier Mix social and cultural event that first Friday evening of the month at the Cleveland Museum of Art.
“He came up to me and tried yelling over the music,” said Mr. Zuzik, who later drove him home, and they exchanged numbers. Within 12 hours they had their first date at a Mexican restaurant, then a stop at Piccadilly Artisan Creamery for liquid nitrogen ice cream.
“Evan couldn’t stop smiling,” said Mr. Stern, who had only been in Cleveland a few months working as the finance director for the Democratic candidate for state attorney general. “ I felt so comfortable and happy. That feeling hasn’t abated.”
Mr. Stern, 27, is now based in Durham as the campaign manager for North Carolina’s attorney general, Josh Stein, a Democrat, in Raleigh. Mr. Stern graduated summa cum laude from Yale, from which he received a simultaneous master’s degree in political science.
Mr. Zuzik, 33, is a biology and an international baccalaureate environmental studies teacher at Hillside High School in Durham. He graduated from Denison University in Granville, Ohio, with two degrees, one in biology and another in music performance, and received a master’s degree in environmental studies from Cleveland State.
“I wanted to introduce him to everything I loved in Cleveland,” said Mr. Zuzik, who moved there in 2009 to go to school and work at the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo.
Within two weeks they were seriously dating, and soon began pursuing their passion for ice cream at home and away. They tried five different places in three days in Seattle where they had orange habanero cookie dough at Molly Moon’s Homemade Ice Cream, the popular cherimoya flavor while in Peru and the original 100-year-old tutti frutti blend at Leopold’s Ice Cream in Savannah, Ga.
After Mr. Stern’s candidate lost the Ohio race in 2018, he landed his current job in North Carolina, and moved to Durham in January 2019 while Mr. Zuzik joined him six months later after finishing up the school year.
“We explored every ice cream parlor we could find in the Triangle,” said Mr. Stern, referring to Durham, Raleigh and Chapel Hill.
On May 19, 2019, a month before Mr. Zuzik joined him in Durham, Mr. Stern proposed at Mr. Zuzik’s old stomping ground — the Cleveland Metropark Zoo — where he had enlisted the help of Bo, a sulphur-crested cockatoo, and his handler Charlotte Petrie, a friend of Mr. Zuzik’s.
At the entrance Bo, perched on a T-stand, presented a card in his beak to Mr. Zuzik. On it was written: “Will you marry me?” They later celebrated with a scoop each from Mitchell’s — Mr. Stern with peanut butter chocolate chunk and Mr. Zuzik with lemon black raspberry yogurt.
The grooms originally planned to get married at the Pittsburgh Opera House, sometime after the November election, with 200 guests. Instead they were married July 24 in Mr. Zuzik’s parents’ backyard in Canfield, Ohio, where Mr. Zuzik’s father had constructed a huppah. Rabbi Yael Dadoun officiated before immediate family. Ice cream wasn’t on the menu, but Mr. Zuzik’s mother made Heath bar cheese cake topped with caramel sauce, Mr. Stern’s favorite, and “the only thing better,” he said, “than a scoop from Mitchell’s.”
“It was easy and fun,” said Mr. Zuzik of the smaller ceremony. “Just like how our relationship has always been.”
