At the end of May 2021, Ilana Madelya Maier received a tipsy call from Tyler Aldrich, asking: “If someone like Scott Berlin, but not Scott Berlin, but Scott Berlin asked you out, what would you say?” Ms. Maier replied, “I would need to get an invite for him to find out.”
Mr. Aldrich was one of Scott Andrew Berlin’s colleagues and best friends. Mr. Aldrich, who worked with Mr. Berlin at Hamilton Campaign Network, a political campaign consulting firm, thought that Mr. Berlin and Ms. Maier would be a good match and decided to take matters into his own hands.
Mr. Aldrich was assigned to Mark Levine’s borough president campaign as a consultant. Ms. Maier was Mark Levine’s campaign manager at the time, so she and Mr. Aldrich spoke frequently.
Ms. Maier and Mr. Berlin had first connected earlier that month via a “perfunctory” work email, Ms. Maier said. A few weeks later, Mr. Berlin texted her and asked if they could get on a Zoom call to discuss campaign details. Their work discussion soon segued into talking about hobbies, “oddly seamlessly for two people whose main personality trait was workaholic,” Ms. Maier said.
“I thought she was cute,” Mr. Berlin said. “And we had good conversations.”
After the Zoom call, Mr. Berlin had asked Mr. Aldrich “if he knew what my deal was,” Ms. Maier said, meaning her romantic status. That question prompted Mr. Aldrich’s call to Ms. Maier, which sparked her curiosity — or “cyberstalking,” as she called it. “Which led me to accidentally liking a many-years-old Instagram photo of Scott’s.”
She reached out to a friend, wondering, “Did he get a notification?”
“He definitely did,” Mr. Berlin joked in an interview, referring to himself. The like led him to follow her on the app.
