Madeleine Laurelle Evans and Charles Raymond Donner were married May 11 at Lafayette, a restaurant in New York. James L. Donner, a brother of the groom who was ordained by the American Marriage Ministries, officiated.
Mrs. Donner, 27, is a manager on the commercial team at the International Well Building Institute, a New York company that manages and administers certification of a standard focused on matters that affect occupant health and well-being in buildings. She graduated from Emory University.
She is the daughter of Deborah L. Evans and Christopher J. Evans of Stamford, Conn. The bride’s father is an independent investment manager in Stamford. Her mother is the manager of the Darien, Conn., franchise of the Kumon reading and mathematics tutoring center.
Mr. Donner, 29, is a senior manager for real estate operations at Knotel, a company in New York that provides flexible office spaces. He graduated from Georgetown.
He is a son of Sheryl S. Donner of Bronxville, N.Y., and William L. Donner of Mount Vernon, N.Y. The groom’s mother retired as the director for community relations at the Bronxville campus of Concordia College. His father retired as an owner of MedCommons, a health care technology company that was in Boston.
The couple met in 2016 through a dating app, the League, and had their first date in New York less than a week after their initial contact. It soon came out that both had fibbed a bit on their self-descriptions.
Their white lies involved tall matters. Ms. Evans is 6 feet tall and had said she was a mere 5- 11, while Mr. Donner shaved off a little more from his height.
“I had decided in my head that 6-foot-6 is the maximum desirable height, so that’s what I had listed on the League,” he said. “Though I’m a bit closer to 6-foot-8, I typically call myself 6-foot-7.”
Mr. Donner had a little experience with the online dating world, and was sensitive to height-shaming memes, he said. “I just sort of assumed that there was like a height at which it starts to get weird, and women would start to worry that I had gigantism or something,” he said. “I think women generally prefer taller men, but I sort of assumed that there was a limit to that.”
Ms. Evans had similar experiences in online dating with height being an issue. “Most men who say they are 6 feet are not 6 feet,” she said. So presenting herself as less than 6 feet, she said, might come across as “more appealing.”
After the two matched on the League, they quickly fell into texting regularly, but by the time it came out that each had not been entirely forthcoming about their true stature, they’d found other, more meaningful things that they had in common. Both volunteered for New York Cares, for example, and had for some time, so when they got together for the first time, six days after their initial contact, each saw much in the other.
“We had this incredibly effortless date, which just went on and on and on,” Mr. Donner said.
That first date was rapidly followed by more dates, and, within a few weeks, they were inseparable.
“We had eight dates in two weeks, which was kind of crazy,” Ms. Evans said. “It was quick that we realized this was a forever thing.”
