Sophie Georgina Clarke and Robert Spencer Shady were married Aug. 24 at the bride’s parents’ house along Lake Champlain in Willsboro, N.Y. Bryony Winn, a friend of the couple who became a Universal Life minister for the event, officiated, incorporating Jewish and Anglican traditions.
Ms. Clarke, 30, is an engagement manager focusing on improving health care in the Summit, N.J., office of McKinsey & Company. She graduated with a degree in economics and Russian from Middlebury College, and received a medical degree from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. In 2011, she was the winner of “Survivor: South Pacific,” which took place in Upolu, Samoa.
She is a daughter of Antonia Bullard and Thurston Clarke. The bride’s father is the author of 13 books including a novel, and works of history and travel literature. His most recent book is “Honorable Exit: How a Few Brave Americans Risked All to Save Our Vietnamese Allies at the End of the War” (Doubleday, 2019). Her mother is based in Willsboro as a senior associate focusing on energy and climate at IHS Markit, a London-based business information company.
Mr. Shady, 33, is an entrepreneur in residence in health care in the New York office of Venrock, a venture capital firm based in Palo Alto, Calif. Until March 2019, he was an associate partner in McKinsey. He graduated with a degree in human biology and international development from Brown. From 2010 to 2011, he studied as a Fulbright fellow in a joint program at the London School of Economics and Political Science and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, from which he received a master’s degree in health policy, planning and financing.
He is a son of Laura W. Shady and Sander H. Shady of Estero, Fla. The groom’s mother, who was a stay-at-home parent, until 1980 taught fourth grade at East Elementary School in Sharon, Mass. His father is based in Estero as an accountant working with corporate and individual clients.
The couple met in 2016 while working in the health care sector at McKinsey in New York. Two years later Mr. Shady proposed at sunrise during a hike in the Adirondacks at the summit of Algonquin Peak in New York. Ms. Clarke lightheartedly called it an “interim proposal” since her mother was on the hike with them, and said she responded with an “interim acceptance.” “He’s definitely my No. 1 alliance for life,” she said. She also added, in a second reference to her time on “Survivor,” “Living on a desert island with 19 strangers certainly prepares you for marriage.”
