Mr. Stephens, 35, who goes by Nate, wondered “if the algorithms and universe” were trying to tell him something. But his heavy workload kept him from dating anyone. Later that month, the algorithms of a third app, Scruff, did it again.
“The timing just clicked,” Mr. Stephens said. “I was in town and he was in town.”
As they exchanged texts with ease, Mr. Daniels softened. They agreed to meet on June 22, at a local bar, Union Drinkery, now St. Vincent Wine, a few blocks from their apartments in the Columbia Heights section of Washington.
They hugged hello outside the bar, and spoke for hours over drinks in the courtyard. At one point, a rat scurried past them; Mr. Stephens remained calm while Mr. Daniels panicked and let out a gasp, pulling his feet up on his chair.
“I’m the country mouse, and he’s the city mouse,” Mr. Stephens said, with a laugh. He grew up on a 400-acre cattle ranch in the Black Hills of South Dakota outside St. Onge, while Mr. Daniels, an Army brat, moved around the country, mostly the South, with his family.
Mr. Stephens runs his own consulting practice connecting organizations and communities to solve racial, social and economic problems. He graduated magna cum laude from Carleton College in Northfield, Minn., and received a Master of Public Administration from the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey in Monterey, Calif.
