PROVO, Utah — Five days a week, in a small beige room in a plain office building here, couples all over the world are granted a golden ticket: the ability to reunite after being separated by Covid-19 travel restrictions, in some cases for more than a year and a half. And to get it, they…
It all started with a headshot. Benjamin Bratcher saw Victoria Lee’s photo when he was a junior and she was an incoming freshman at Abilene Christian University, in Texas. Both theater majors, they met at a department party in August of 2013. “He struck up a conversation with me,” Ms. Lee said. “I was instantly…
Nineteen minutes into the film “Zola,” the actress TS Madison delivers a devotion that becomes a kind of mantra for the rest of the film. “Dear heavenly father, we come to you thanking you today for all the bounties that you’ve bestowed upon us, Jesus,” her character, a stripper named Hollywood, recites with her head…
Don Allison has been restoring an 1835 house in northwest Ohio for 15 years. Mr. Allison, who was a daily newspaper editor, has spent time digging into the house’s history. He looked through area library files, read local history books and poured through county tax and property records. Along the way, he learned that his…
Before Michael Ruxsaksriskul figured out that Kassie Edwards didn’t want to date him because of his personality, he assumed his personal baggage was to blame. As a newly divorced father of five on the verge of bankruptcy, the former Marine knew he was carrying a lot. What he didn’t know was that Ms. Edwards was…
The first time a real estate agent took Ian Stewart to see the old saltbox farmhouse on a rocky hillside in Ghent, N.Y., he knew he wanted to buy it. “It got its hooks into me. I loved it. It had a warmth to it,” Mr. Stewart said. One question continued to nag at him…
Jamie Drucker and Scott Huber met on a party bus on the way to Virginia’s Gold Cup horse race, in 2014. “A mutual friend introduced us,” Ms. Drucker said. “I looked for him on Facebook the next day and couldn’t find him. Later that day, I got a Facebook message from Scott asking me out.”…
When Lauren Annunziata sat down to eat pizza at her cousin’s birthday party in October 1995 at Kids N’ Action, a children’s entertainment center in Brooklyn, she had no idea that her future husband was at the same table as her. In fact, the only evidence that remains of Ms. Annunziata and Gabriel Vincent Piscione’s…
The Untermyer Gardens Conservancy, which restores and maintains the 43-acre former estate in Yonkers, N.Y., celebrated its 10th anniversary on Sept. 14 with a sunset party. The event honored Stephen F. Byrns, the conservancy’s longtime president, and Andrea Stewart-Cousins, the majority leader of the New York State Senate. A garden tour was followed by a…
The first time I heard my father’s voice he had been dead for 53 years. It all started when my cousin, who lives in Jerusalem, gave me 25 audio reels in round metal cans. She had found them while cleaning out her parents’ home there. “They’re of your father singing opera,” my cousin told me…