When Ilana Ozernoy was a young girl growing up in the Soviet Union, her father, Leonid Ozernoy, a prominent astrophysicist in Moscow, bought her a telescope. Ms. Ozernoy and her father, who was a scientist at the P.N. Lebedev Physics Institute in Moscow, along with her older sister and mother, would spend summers in the…
The coronavirus pandemic has changed the way many people look at wedding invitations. While they want to be supportive of a couple, and celebrate with friends and family, they may be unsure whether to R.S.V.P. yes or just stay home. Before booking a flight, renting a car, or slapping down a credit card for a…
My wife sent me a text: “Molly is going to call you with news. Be happy.” The call came, and the news: Our older daughter, Molly Jane, 26, who has lived in Russia since she went to graduate school there four years ago, was engaged to marry her current boyfriend, Pavel Shushkov, known as Pasha,…
We’ve all had moments in our lives when we’ve felt like there was absolutely nothing that could turn our luck around. For Naomie Brinvilus, a writer from Haiti, that moment came after her country’s devastating 2010 earthquake, which left her family homeless and hungry. Feeling desperate, she sought help from a spiritual guide. His prescription…
Ron Bel Bruno had at least 27 years of experience with internet dating, he said, when he encountered Dr. Edward Goldberg online in September 2016. Both were on Fire Island at the time, though Dr. Goldberg (left), an internist and gastroenterologist in private practice in New York, was on call at a local clinic, so…
After Rabbi Jennifer Anne Gubitz reactivated her lapsed dating app memberships and joined new ones in August 2017, she was intrigued by a three-month-old message on JDate from Matan BenYishay who had the screen name TzedekNerd (tzedek means justice in Hebrew). “Oh no,’” Rabbi Gubitz, who goes by Jen, recalled thinking, and quickly messaged him.…
Dr. Chloe Ciccariello remembers looking forward to a quiet nap one day in August 2006 at her Columbia dormitory, which was then assigned mostly to freshman engineering students. Suddenly the deafening sounds of electric guitar music outside her door roused her from bed in search of the source. She opened the door and found Dr.…
By the time Alex Song said his first hello to Kelly Jean Qu in September 2017, she was saying goodbye to New York, where she had lived for nearly three years, and on the verge of moving back to her native Los Angeles. “I had already packed up most of my furniture and I was…
Shana Caro, a 31-year-old scientist at Columbia University who grew up in White Plains, N.Y., has lived in Borneo, Costa Rica, Uganda, Kenya, Oxford, and a tiny town in the Netherlands called Wageningen. Georgina Emerson (left), 34, the founder and director of Teach About Women, a nonprofit organization based in her native New York that…
Shortly after graduating from college in 2003, Marisol Orihuela and Mark Roland both ended up living in the same Atlanta house that was sponsored by the Jesuit Volunteer Corps, to which both had enlisted for a year of public service. Mr. Roland, a Notre Dame graduate, says he had a crush on her; Ms. Orihuela,…