Mason McDowell went to a Wichita, Kan., job fair in March 2020 expecting his hands to get sweaty and his throat to go dry for the usual reasons. The competition was considerable, and he hoped to walk out with an offer to put his elementary school teaching credentials to use. “I remember thinking, OK, I’m…
Damon Holick could hardly believe it when his mother called in April of 2021 to say she thought she saw a photo of him on television proposing to Erica Willard. She was right. The photo of Mr. Holick on one knee in front of Ms. Willard at the pier in the Woodlands, Texas, at Hughes…
“I think at first we thought it wasn’t going to stick, especially when Trump became president in 2016, and then the coronavirus,” Ms. Garcia said. “But both our families really wanted to see it happen this time around, so we made it happen.” It happened on the 20-year anniversary of the day the two brides…
Alexis Joondeph-Breidbart let Ryan Linden know before their first date that if he wanted to win her over, he should come armed with better-than-average conversational skills. “The first thing she said to me when we met on Hinge was, ‘You can do better than that,’” Mr. Linden said. That was in response to a February…
In 2011, Eddie Rosenbaum had just returned to his hometown Cleveland from a year in Rio de Janeiro, when he and Dr. Donelle Cummings, who was headed for Brazil soon himself, found each other on a dating website for men. “His profile was in Portuguese, and I was like, who in Cleveland speaks Portuguese?” Mr.…
Six weeks after Dr. Lauren Grossman and Glenn Kramon were introduced by mutual friends via email in November 2015, they had not yet spoken to each other, though they were undeniably smitten with one another. “She had a big mind,” said Mr. Kramon, 68, a lecturer at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and a…
Emily Bick was in New York, visiting her parents over the winter holidays in 2014, when the online dating service OkCupid rated her match with Nora Forbes, who was in Minneapolis, at 97 percent. “The closest I’d ever come before was 70 percent,” said Dr. Bick, who was at the time working for a tree-care…
Matthew Hayes was immediately attracted to Anne Muscarella when they first matched on the dating app Bumble in February 2018. “She had a big smile in all of her photos,” he said. “I could feel her warmth. I had a feeling that she would be a fun and real person.” Ms. Muscarella was living in…
Having a long, dark, Burt Reynolds-style mustache can be a blessing or a curse, depending on the circumstances. For Sean Welch Bredbenner, it turned out to be both one day in 2018. Mr. Bredbenner, a member of the Directors Guild of America, was in Washington, working on the set of “The Man Standing Next,” a…
Just as was likely true of the diplomatic event at which Hillary Liepa and Dwight Lin met, in November 2013 — a Beijing luncheon between then-Vice President Joe Biden and his Chinese counterpart — the real work of building the relationship was done in email. Months and months of it, written at epic lengths. “They…