Kimberly Panicek Trueblood and Ezra Leland Mechaber were married Dec. 14 in an elopement ceremony at Palma, a restaurant in Manhattan. Christian Peele, an ordained minister with the American Baptist Church and a friend of the couple, officiated.
The bride, 36, works in New York as the chief of staff for the American Civil Liberties Union. She graduated from the University of Washington and received a master’s degree in public policy from the Paris Institute of Political Studies .
She is a daughter of Mark A. Panicek and a stepdaughter of Kathryn E. Panicek of Whitefish, Mont. The bride’s father, who is retired, was a rescue helicopter pilot for the Coast Guard in Tampa, Fla. Her stepmother, who is also retired, was a nursein Tampa.
The bride’s first marriage ended in divorce.
The groom, 30, is a marketer for Glitch, a coding start-up in Manhattan. He graduated from the University of Rochester. He is a son of Wendy Mechaber and Richard Robinson of Sherborn, Mass. The groom’s parents are farmers at Hopestill, an organic farm in Sherborn.
The couple met in 2013 at the White House, where Ms. Trueblood was the director of White House operations, and Mr. Mechaber worked in the Office of Digital Strategy, overseeing technical aspects of the digital operation.
“To watch KP work on a day-to-day basis is just an extraordinary experience,” Mr. Mechaber said. “She is the most brilliant person I know, and I’m sure many people who have worked with her feel the same way.”
They remained colleagues for two years until they began developing feelings for each other and started dating, albeit briefly, in 2015, a time when Ms. Trueblood was moving from Washington to Brooklyn to work as Hillary Clinton’s chief financial officer during Mrs. Clinton’s presidential campaign.
“Though Ezra and I really liked each other, we had two problems going on,” Ms. Trueblood said. “Neither of us were ever crazy about the idea of dating where we worked, so when I moved to Brooklyn, that door opened up for us.”
But there was still that second problem.
“Our six-year age difference made things difficult for me, as I didn’t take us very seriously as a couple,” Ms. Trueblood said. “I just felt it was something that could pose potential problems for us.”
Nevertheless, they dated for a few months, but split up when Mr. Mechaber left the White House for the private sector.
They spent the next few years apart, but reconnected after Ms. Clinton lost the election, and Ms. Trueblood took a job working in the A.C.L.U., as did Mr. Mechaber in fall 2017.
The following summer, they went for coffee, and confessed that they each still had feelings for each other.
“By then, neither of us had even mentioned the age-difference thing,’ Mr. Mechaber said. “It was no longer a factor.”
By February 2019, Ms. Trueblood and Mr. Mechaber had fallen deeply in love.
“She brings out the best side of me in terms of the way I engage with the world,” he said. “I’ve become a much better person for having her in my life.”
And by her own admission, Ms. Trueblood has become a less-busy person in terms of her profession.
“Ezra has gotten me to slow down some and stop being such a workaholic,” she said. “Thanks to him, I also read more fiction these days, I go for long walks, I make appearances at wine bars and I have been to the theater more times this year than all of my previous years combined.”
