In November 2017, Varun Anand sat next to Hannah Smith at a bar in Manhattan’s West Village. They were attending the going-away party of a friend who Mr. Anand had worked with in 2016 on the Clinton presidential campaign, and who Ms. Smith worked with in 2012 on the Obama campaign.
“We covered a ton of topics,” said Ms. Smith, who is the head of privacy and security policy for the social media platform Clubhouse. “I have friends who were sitting across from the table that night and they were like, ‘Nobody could get a word in between the two of you.’”
That dynamic was to play out again a few days later when the pair went on their first date, which lasted seven hours. “I have always found that there’s just something electric about Varun and our conversations,” Ms. Smith said. “But I think the thing that impressed me on our first date in particular was the breadth of the topics that we covered,” she added, with subjects that ranged from city building and urban planning to former New York City deputy mayors.
While the pair became “inseparable” soon after, as Mr. Anand put it, the couple attributed how quickly their relationship evolved to their six-year age gap, as Mr. Anand was 23 and Ms. Smith 29 when the couple met and began dating. (They are now 27 and 32.)
“Twenty-three-year-old men are probably not exactly known for their commitment levels and their eagerness for long-term relationships, and 29-year-old-women probably are a bit more so,” said Mr. Anand, the director of operations and strategy for the tech-enabled insurance brokerage Newfront. “I wanted to be considerate,” he added, explaining that while they both knew their connection was special, they were also at different points in their lives and neither wanted to “waste” Ms. Smith’s time.
This took the form of many serious and honest conversations from the beginning, traveling together often to test their compatibility, as well as making personal and professional sacrifices to give the relationship a chance. Mr. Anand chose to turn down job opportunities in California to remain in New York with Ms. Smith, while Ms. Smith delayed moving in with Mr. Anand so that he could live with his friends longer.
The pair knew marriage was on the table as it was something they had discussed early on in their relationship. They went ring shopping together in June 2020 before Mr. Anand proposed to Ms. Smith by the sea in Mendocino, Calif., on Nov. 21, 2020.
The couple wed Aug. 28, 2021 in Sundance, Utah. (Ms. Smith is originally from Salt Lake City, and Mr. Anand was born in Chennai, India, and grew up in Augusta, Ga.). They rented a private home to host what Mr. Anand described as “an upscale house party” for their 60 guests.
Because of the pandemic, the couple purposefully kept their invite list smaller, and organized mostly outdoor activities, which included a wood-fired pizza truck and bar trivia events on Friday, and hiking and river rafting options on Saturday.
Mr. Anand and Ms. Smith were married by Mr. Anand’s cousin, Aneesh Raman, who received his ordination online by the Universal Life Church for the event. The private ceremony included Mr. Anand’s parents and two best friends, along with Ms. Smith’s parents, her three siblings and their partners.
After giving up their apartment in November 2020 to travel during the pandemic, the couple is looking forward to settling down and, according to Mr. Anand, “building a home and family together” in San Francisco, where their offices are.
Ms. Smith said that what excites her most about the future is getting to spend more time with Mr. Anand. “You know how you expect to find those hard edges in someone, where somebody’s got to have a crazy chip on their shoulder, or you find a mean streak?” she said. In the case of Mr. Anand, she’s learned that the deeper she goes, “the softer and kinder it gets.”
