Mary Alexandra Kougeas Crowley perked up her ears when Justin Warren Douds sang “I’m just a bachelor. I’m looking for a partner” the winter of 2014 at a karaoke league competition at a Washington bar. Neither, though, was looking for a partner at the time. “I sang Magic Mike’s ‘Pony,’ but I didn’t do the…
Bria Schirripa can easily rattle off many of Michael Buccarelli’s admirable qualities. “He’s extremely loyal, very family-oriented and has a really fun side to him,” said Ms. Schirripa, 29, who met Mr. Buccarelli, 32, in March 2016, when they began working in side-by-side cubicles at First Data Corporation, a financial services firm in Jersey City,…
When asked what they believed brought them together in December 2017, Dr. Christine Gruessner and Przemyslaw Grabowski each offered an explanation that could be summed up in a single word: magnetism. “We were instantly magnetized toward each other,” said Dr. Gruessner, 35, an internal medicine resident at the University of Minnesota. “He was on a…
Talia Brown Thall, a Toronto-based stylist and personal shopper, had plenty of support when she decided to scentscape her February 2019 wedding at the Omni King Edward Hotel in Toronto. Ever since she made her first scent purchase when she scored her first job, where she worked in high-end luxury store sales, Thall was fixated…
The home of the first same-sex couple to legally marry in California will become a historical landmark, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors ruled this week. On Tuesday, the city’s supervisors voted unanimously to grant landmark designation for the home owned by the couple, Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin, who are both lesbian activists and…
Amy Katherine Larko and Blake Falanga, best friends since seventh grade, made a pact in 2011, the beginning of senior year at New Trier High School in Winnetka, Ill. If neither was seeing anyone seriously they would go to the senior prom together. “I met a girl today,” Mr. Falanga told his mother four years…
Deborah Breisblatt and Jeremy Lizt met on the Jewish dating app JSwipe in January 2020, when pandemic pods were not yet a thing. They went on dates, 11 to be exact. And then the coronavirus surfaced, and along with it, a shelter-in-place order. Mr. Lizt suggested that Ms. Breisblatt move in with him. “Either we’ll…
Two friends and a sea monster brought Caitlin Kiernan and Kenny Kaplan together. These were not your average friends, nor sea monster. The creature came courtesy of a 1970s children’s TV show about two boys and their briny buddy. The friends were a little more current. The couple’s story starts in 2014, two years after…
From there, they built a platonic relationship that lasted for a few years. They privately knew that some romantic feelings remained, but they ignored them for the sake of preserving the friendship. They didn’t speak much about their past romance. A turning point came in 2017. On the day of the presidential inauguration of Donald…
Alexandra Ossa and Alexander Wong went on their first trip as a couple in January 2017 on a drive to the mountains of Asheville, N.C. At some point on that trip, the love connection between Ms. Ossa, 31, and Mr. Wong, 35, temporarily short-circuited. “I threw out the L word and didn’t get one back,”…