In a relationship open to perusal by millions of followers, the podcasters Cody Michael Kolodziejzyk and Kelsey Lang Kreppel have made a practice of not letting their favorite moments turn into content.
One such moment was their Dec. 18, 2021, engagement on the beach in Malibu, Calif. They could have played the giant seal carcass that had washed ashore at Mr. Kolodziejzyk’s proposal site for laughs. But, Ms. Kreppel said, “even though I film our day-to-day life and people know a lot of what’s going on with us, Cody and I are really mindful about what we share and what we keep just for us.”
Ms. Kreppel, 29, and Mr. Kolodziejzyk, 32, live in Los Angeles. They have separate YouTube channels but collaborate on certain series, including “Couples Cringe.” Both have built an audience on playful musings.
Mr. Kolodziejzyk, who shortened his professional name to Ko at the start of his media career, is known, among other things, for co-hosting the “Tiny Meat Gang” podcast with Noel Miller. Ms. Kreppel, a vlogger known for her red-carpet fashion reviews, runs a fashion and accessories line, TRULUVE, and hosts a podcast called “Circle Time.”
The couple met at Ms. Kreppel’s Mar Vista, Calif., apartment in June 2017, when one of her roommates invited friends over. Mr. Kolodziejzyk, who had a following on the short-lived platform Vine and was just starting to get attention on YouTube, was among them. He had heard the apartment housed cute women. “I was like, ‘hubba hubba,’” he said.
He remembers what Ms. Kreppel was wearing the second he saw her: a cutoff Frank Sinatra T-shirt, jeans and a black choker. “I thought she had a really cool style and was really beautiful,” he said.
Ms. Kreppel, then a preschool teacher in North Hollywood, liked him right away, too. “I felt like I could be funny and kind of silly around him, and he was understanding that side of me,” she said.
By the time they said good night, they had taken the cinnamon challenge together (he choked, she didn’t) and separated themselves from the others to snack on hard-boiled eggs out of the refrigerator. “He was kind of hungry and I was like, ‘This is the only thing I can offer you,’” she said.
Later that night, she messaged him on Instagram. “I sent him something really ridiculous about eating hard-boiled eggs again next time,” she said. “It was not cute at all.” But he responded.
Ms. Kreppel is from Los Angeles. She graduated from California State University, Northridge, with a bachelor’s degree in child and adolescent development. Mr. Kolodziejzyk, who grew up in Calgary, Alberta, received a bachelor’s degree in computer science from Duke University.
After the cinnamon and egg encounter, Mr. Kolodziejzyk spent the next month visiting a friend in Europe. While he was gone, they texted regularly about “Love Island,” a hit in London. “Everyone was talking about it,” Mr. Kolodziejzyk said. They got hooked on the series together.
When he returned to Los Angeles in July, they reunited at the Lincoln, a bar in Venice, for a mutual friend’s birthday party. “We sat there holding hands and talking to each other the whole time,” Ms. Kreppel said. On his way home, Mr. Kolodziejzyk texted a friend. “I was like, I met my wife, basically,” he said. That September, on a trip to San Diego, he asked her to be his girlfriend.
“Couples Cringe,” in which they dissect unfortunate internet behavior together, debuted in 2018, the year they moved to a small apartment together in Marina Del Ray. They found less time for mutual cringing in 2019 when “Tiny Meat Gang” won a Shorty Award for best podcast. “I was on tour for like the entire year, and sometimes that got a little difficult,” Mr. Kolodziejzyk said.
The pandemic put an end to what was beginning to feel like a long distance relationship. In 2020, the two moved out of the apartment in Marina del Rey and into a house in Venice, where they quarantined. There, constant togetherness pushed them toward more filming as a duo. This was OK with their separate audiences. “We have the exact same sense of humor,” Mr. Kolodziejzyk said. “People like us as a unit. It was natural.”
The seal carcass that washed ashore shortly before he proposed in 2021 was natural, too. But that didn’t stop him from worrying it would wreck the moment. “It was gigantic and it smelled, and no one wants to see a carcass on the day of their engagement,” he said.
It was too late to ask her to marry him elsewhere: Yards away, a surprise Champagne picnic put together by a company he had hired was waiting. “In my head I was thinking, What are we supposed to do? Just hope she doesn’t notice?”
She did notice. But her reaction after she said yes reinforced the feeling they were made for each other. “She took a selfie with it,” he said. “That’s how I know she’s the one.”
On Feb. 4, Mr. Kolodziejzyk and Ms. Kreppel were married at the Sands Hotel and Spa in Indian Wells, Calif., by their friend Adam Cue, with Emma Feitshans, another friend, participating in the ceremony. Both were ordained by American Marriage Ministries for the occasion.
Their 150 guests didn’t have to be camera-ready for their millions of fans. The wedding was “not for money or for videos or for likes,” Ms. Kreppel said. “It was for love. And it was just for us.”
