Caroline Marie Darmody first noticed Jared Joseph Jones during a February 2016 orientation session for an upcoming staff delegation trip to India. At the time, both worked as legislative assistants in Washington, but on different sides of the aisle: Mr. Jones for Republican Senator Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia and Ms. Darmody for Democratic Representative Joseph P. Kennedy III of Massachusetts.
“I was seated across this long rectangular table from Jared,” Ms. Darmody said. “I thought, who’s this big happy teddy bear person?”
Later that month, the two arrived in India. “At the time, I was a young, hard-line, left-of-center, ‘I don’t speak to Republicans’ sort of person,” she said. In addition to politics, there were some differences in their upbringings as well. Ms. Darmody spent most of her childhood in Miami and Mr. Jones is from an unincorporated community in West Virginia called Volga.
But despite all that, Ms. Darmody was charmed by the jokes Mr. Jones told as they toured the country.
Soon after returning home, Ms. Darmody, 35, emailed Mr. Jones, 38, to ask him out. On leap day, they met for a drink at Bier Baron Tavern in Washington’s Dupont Circle neighborhood. The date went swimmingly.
More dates followed until Ms. Darmody received a call in March 2016 saying she had been accepted to Harvard Law School. They weren’t sure they would be able to make a long-distance relationship work. “She’s moving away and she’s going to marry a khaki pants Harvard Law School guy from a good family in Greenwich, Connecticut,” Mr. Jones said.
