Shana Renée Scala and Jamar Leonard Chess were married on Sept. 8 in Manhattan. Judge Toni M. Cimino of the New York City Criminal Court in Kew Gardens, Queens, and an aunt of the bride, officiated at the Central Park Zoo.
Mrs. Chess, 32, is a creative marketing and event production consultant in Manhattan. She graduated from N.Y.U.
She is the daughter of Yolanda T. Scala and Dominic P. Scala of Middle Village, Queens. Her father is the baseball coach at Adelphi University in Garden City, N.Y., and was a bullpen coach for the New York Yankees from 1978-1986, for whom he was the bullpen catcher when the team won the World Series in 1978. Her mother was an owner, with her husband, of Scala Jewelry, which was in the New York Jewelers Exchange in Lower Manhattan.
Mr. Chess, 37, is a founder of the Sunflower Entertainment Company and Spirit Music Latino, both music publishers in Manhattan. He graduated from Manhattanville College.
He is the son of Robin Chess and Marshall P. Chess of Phoenicia, N.Y. The groom’s mother retired as the cooking teacher at the Phoenicia Elementary School. His father founded Rolling Stones Records and ran Arc Music, which was the publishing arm of Chess Records. The groom’s grandfather, the late Leonard Chess, was a founder of Chess Records, which was in Chicago.
The couple met in late fall 2015, when Ms. Scala was at Soho House, the hotel and private club, with Mr. Chess’s sister — Ms. Scala was working as her publicist — and Mr. Chess stopped by to pick up his sister for a family event and ended up joining them for a drink.
The drink turned into dinner as conversation flowed easily among the three.
“There was an energetic connection from the beginning,” Mr. Chess said.
Ms. Scala felt the same. “You know when you just get a vibe from someone when you first meet them? You’re like, Oooh, this is refreshing!” she said.
But Mr. Chess was involved with someone else at the time, so there was nowhere to go but Instagram with their mutual interest: They began following each other on the social media site, and Ms. Scala soon developed a sense, from what he posted, that the two might be a good match.
“He’s just unbelievably interesting and charismatic and the most generous, kind man,” she said. “You rarely find someone who has his level of sophistication and his level of humility and heart.”
When his sister contacted her six months later saying that Mr. Chess was now single and proposing a setup, she said, “I kind of had those feelings already, so it was interesting that she said that.”
Mr. Chess’s first impression of their chemistry grew stronger on their first date.
“I really like that she knows what she wants, that she’s competent, that there’s conviction there,” he said. “It just felt good being with her. I felt that she was there for me, and immediately made me a priority, which I liked, obviously.”
For Ms. Scala, the differences in their background — she grew up in Queens, he grew up in the Catskills, for example — made them a natural complement to each other, and their shared experience growing up in families with storied histories and proximity to celebrity added to their compatibility.
“For all the different things, it seemed like we had similar points of view,” she said. “We have the same values. We were exposed to a lot as children, which helps us bond over our shared passion for life, doing things together and experiencing things. But our ambitions are driving our lives now.”
