George Birman and Philip Alexander Gubert were married Sept. 21 at Sylvester Manor on Shelter Island, N.Y. Mary Burchart, Mr. Gubert’s aunt and a Universal Life minister, officiated.
Mr. Birman (left), 31, is a private equity investor specializing in consumer and retail brands in the Manhattan office of Eurazeo, an investment company based in Paris. He graduated from Georgetown and received a master’s degree in international studies and an M.B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania.
He is the son of Ann Birman and Garry Birman, both of Chicago.
Mr. Gubert, 29, is the director of delivery and creative services at Bleecker Street Films, a film distribution company in Manhattan, where he has worked on movies including “Leave No Trace” and “McQueen.” He has two bachelor’s degrees from Michigan State University, one in media arts and technology and the other in business administration and management control.
He is a son of Maureen J. Gubert and Thomas A. Gubert of Brighton, Mich.
Mr. Birman and Mr. Gubert met in 2014 on the dating app Hinge.
They soon had drinks at Richlane, a bar in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Mr. Birman, who said he was feeling jaded after two years of going on multiple dates a week, was immediately attracted to Mr. Gubert’s “nice, calm energy.”
“It felt like he wanted to be there,” Mr. Birman said. “Sometimes, you go on a date and people are impatient and trying to figure out, ‘Am I going to like you or am I not going to like you?’”
Mr. Gubert said of Mr. Birman, “I liked how confident he was. There was something very striking and interesting about him and also very grown up.”
Mr. Birman summed up the date: “That was the end of two years of being single.”
Both grew up in the Midwest — Mr. Birman in Glenview, Ill. and Mr. Gubert in Brighton, Mich. — while dreaming of moving to New York or Paris or London. As a teenager, Mr. Gubert worked in a movie theater and was transported to faraway places via film while Mr. Birman’s parents spoke Russian at home and talked about Europe often. (Mr. Birman was 4 when his family emigrated to the United States from the former Soviet Union.) “I grew up in an all-American place with parents whose reference point was Europe,” he said. “I knew I wanted to see more of the world.”
Weeks after they met, Mr. Birman started graduate school at Penn and spent the summer of 2014 traveling around the world with fellow students as part of the curriculum. He and Mr. Gubert stayed in touch via phone calls, texts, FaceTime, Skype and Instagram and managed to grow closer even as they grew farther apart geographically.
Mr. Birman was often waking up as Mr. Gubert was going to sleep, or vice versa, which inspired Mr. Gubert to create a photo album titled, “It’s Morning Here.” The album featured photos Mr. Birman sent to him from places like Singapore and Tanzania. It also included quotes from texts they wrote to each other like: “I would have been your best friend growing up” or “I never want to leave you again for this long.” Mr. Gubert also included a little poem he wrote that ended, “You’ve traveled the globe and I’ve traveled the cinema/I think our worlds will collide in the best way.”
After graduate school, Mr. Birman went through a few trying periods of unemployment that both tested and bonded the couple. “Even though I was kind of lost and going from interview to interview and spending a lot of days not knowing what to do with myself, Phil was really supportive,” Mr. Birman said. “I felt I had a purpose, at least I had Phil.”
In July 2016, they moved into an apartment together in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn. In August 2018, Mr. Birman proposed in Rome with two wedding rings, one for Mr. Gubert and one for himself. Before the wedding, each wore their ring on their right hand and after, on their left.
