Laird Elizabeth Nelson moved to Seattle, sight unseen, in 2015 to work as an in-house lawyer at Amazon.
As a newcomer, she heard the common refrain “Seattle residents are friendly and nice to you but will freeze you out.” Local residents have long had a reputation for keeping to themselves. It’s known as the Seattle Freeze.
Casey Patrick McNerthney, she learned, was the polar opposite.
Mr. McNerthney, 40, spotted her profile in 2018 on the Hinge dating app one morning before work. Without overthinking it, he sent her a message before zipping down the freeway to KIRO-TV, a CBS affiliate in Seattle, where he was the executive producer of digital media until last year. Mr. McNerthney, who graduated from Western Washington University in Bellingham, Wash., is now the director of communications at the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office in Seattle.
“You pick the neighborhood, and I’ll pick the place,” he messaged Ms. Nelson, 37, who graduated with honors from Johns Hopkins University, received a diploma from the School of Advanced International Studies in Bologna, Italy, and a law degree from Columbia.
They met at Laredo’s Grill, a Tex-Mex place in the Queen Anne neighborhood downtown, and 20 minutes later he confessed that he had no idea how to pronounce her name.
“‘It’s like Laird’s Applejack,’” he recalled her saying.
He loved that she was classy, but not afraid of sharing a big plate of steak nachos as they drank margaritas and chatted for two hours, including about his life growing up in Seattle and hers on the East Coast.
“He was never at a loss for words,” she said.
Well, except for an awkward moment later outside.
“You can kiss me if you want to,” she said, and he did.
He called her from a work trip in San Diego a couple of days later, and then the next Friday she called him for a last-minute drink. As a result, he missed the annual painting of the green stripe along the city’s St. Patrick’s Day parade route, which his family tries to attend each year. (He is the great-grandson of Lily Kempson McAlerney, who was the last surviving rebel of the 1916 Easter Rising in Dublin for an independent Ireland.)
“It was a great time with her,” he said, and the next year Ms. Nelson joined him for the painting of the green stripe tradition. On another date they had cocktails next to the observation deck of Smith Tower, where he amused her with local history including the 1977 dispute between the owner of the tower at the time and the City of Seattle over a salmon-shaped windsock he placed on the flagpole atop the building. (A variance was granted.) Mr. McNerthney then led her through the narrow, winding streets of Pioneer Square to Taco Delmar for $3 tacos.
“He’s such a funny mix of a walking history book in a welcoming way of let me bring you into this history, but let’s not get caught up in it,” she said.
But from his perspective, he had one main objective with what she called his “history podcast.”
“I wanted her to love Seattle as much as I do,” he said.
At the end of 2019, she and her Labrador-mix, Millie, moved into the Arts and Crafts bungalow he then shared with his calico cat, Skooks. Mr. McNerthney proposed one Sunday evening in January 2020 after he rushed home from work.
“I’ll always have a bit of the East Coast in me,” said Ms. Nelson, who is taking the groom’s name. “I’ve earned my stripes. I know enough Seattle history to play a good Seattleite. He makes me feel this is home.”
They planned to marry in June 2020 at Duke’s, a local restaurant, with about 200 guests, but called it off in April amid the coronavirus pandemic.
On March 5, Nicole Brodeur, a Universal Life minister and a friend of the couple, officiated before their parents (hers flew in from New Jersey), and his friend Morgan Marshall, at the Salish Lodge & Spa in Snoqualmie, Wash.
As the rain held off, they enjoyed red velvet cake made by the groom’s mother. And for one more bit of history from the groom: “It was the first real good hug with our parents since the start of the pandemic,” he said.
