Tyler Charles Eyre believes he never would have met Yasmin Khorram, whom he considers his soul mate, had her family not fled Iran four decades ago. But it was a tragic turn of events that precipitated that move.
As the Iranian Revolution was taking place in 1979, Ms. Khorram’s maternal grandfather, a top military commander during the reign of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, was executed. Her grandmother, along with her parents, abandoned their family home and moved to Denver to begin rebuilding their lives.
Ms. Khorram, 36, who grew up in Seattle after her parents relocated there, has never been to Iran. She said she dreams of one day visiting the country her grandmother loved, though not the one she left.
Mr. Eyre, 33, who was raised in Rockaway, N.J., by an American mother and an Australian father, knew little of Iran until he met Ms. Khorram. He noted, sadly, that “it took Yas’s grandma losing the love of her life for me to find mine.”
Mr. Eyre and Ms. Khorram lived on opposite coasts through college. She attended Whittier College in Whittier, Calif., receiving a bachelor’s degree in journalism and world affairs. He has a bachelor’s degree in economics from St. John’s University in Queens, N.Y., and a master’s degree in journalism from N.Y.U.
The two overlapped in New York, when Ms. Khorram relocated for her work as a producer at CNN, from 2015 through 2018. Mr. Eyre was a senior producer at CNBC. Yet they never met.
