After three dates with Philip Stiller, Kerry Ederer knew her search, virtual or otherwise, was over.
Ms. Ederer, 35, a morning news anchor for “Good Day Wake Up,” on Fox 5 News in New York, said she stayed awake many nights “virtually looking everywhere in search of my Prince Charming.”
In March 2019, she found Mr. Stiller, a widower with two young children and two old cats, in a match on Bumble.
Mr. Stiller, 38, an equity analyst for Surveyor Capital, an investment firm in New York, became a widower in 2018 after his wife died of complications from breast cancer. He was living with his toddler twins — his daughter, Andi, and his son, Josh — and their two cats.
“I hadn’t been on a first date since I went on one with my wife 13 years ago,” Mr. Stiller said. “I had no idea what to expect, I wasn’t sure if I was even ready for a relationship.”
They made plans to meet at Hillstone, a mutually favorite restaurant in Manhattan, for drinks on March 19, 2019.
During their conversation, they discussed many things, including their education, Ms. Ederer graduated from the University of Michigan, and received a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia. Mr. Stiller graduated from Duke.
“She was more shocked by the fact that I had two cats than she was by the fact that I had two kids,” Mr. Stiller said, laughing.
He walked her home after that first date and they shared their first kiss, and began texting nonstop. By the third date, Ms. Ederer called her mother to say that she was going to marry Mr. Stiller.
They spent the next year playing golf, traveling to the Bahamas and Kiawah Island, and enjoying the company of each other’s families.
On March 19, 2020, exactly one year after they met, Mr. Stiller, at his home in Oradell, N.J., with Ms. Ederer and the twins, brought out three new books for him and Ms. Ederer to read aloud.
Mr. Stiller read the first two books, “Oh the Places You’ll Go” and “I Like You,” about “the feeling of really just liking someone, enjoying their company, and wanting to be around them,” Ms. Ederer said.
Then Mr. Stiller suggested that Ms. Ederer read the last book, “Your Personal Penguin.” She began reading it and started to cry. “Wherever you go,” she read, “I’ll go there too, here and there and everywhere, and always with you.”
“I want to be your personal penguin,” she continued. “I want to be your personal penguin from now on. Please?”
Mr. Stiller then dropped to one knee and said to Josh and Andi: “Do we love Kerry? Do we want her to be in our family forever?” He then turned to Ms. Ederer and said, “Will you marry me?”
Mr. Stiller and Ms. Ederer were soon celebrating via FaceTime with their families, including their parents, Janet and Louis Ederer of Melville, N.Y., and Lori and Philip Stiller of Airmont, N.Y.
The couple originally discussed getting married at the Essex House hotel in Manhattan, with about 200 guests. But because of the coronavirus, the couple had their legal ceremony on July 15, 2020, in their Oradell backyard. Oradell Mayor Dianne Didio performed the ceremony before 12 family members.
On July 18, the couple took part in a second ceremony on the beach at the Westhampton, N.Y., summer home of the bride’s parents. It was led by Dr. David Greene, an uncle of the bride and a Universal Life minister. Dr. Samuel Greenstein, a cousin of the bride, also took part in the ceremony, which was livestreamed so that friends and other relatives around the country could tune in.
