Every time Sigrid Carrie Gabler sees a full moon it reminds her of her first date with Manly Lin Romero in January 2019 at the Quarter, a restaurant in Fort Greene, Brooklyn.
“The moment he saw me he had a big smile,” said Dr. Gabler, 57, who a few weeks earlier had decided to give him a chance after he kept showing up as a 98 percent match on the dating app OkCupid.
Over hors d’oeuvres and wine they spoke about their jobs, and their children. Ms. Gabler has two daughters, Abigail Johnson, 27, and Amalya Johnson, 22; Mr. Romero has a son, Cameron, 17.
“Our kids are extremely important to both of our lives,” said Dr. Romero, 54, whose previous marriage ended in divorce, as did the bride’s.
As they walked to the G train later, they noticed the full moon, and Dr. Romero recalled they had a “really nice hug” before heading to different parts of Brooklyn — she to Bedford-Stuyvesant and he to Kensington.
“We had a romantic moment on opposite subway platforms and could see each other’s breath from the cold,” Dr. Romero said. “It was quiet and we had the platforms to ourselves. We were smiling.”
They each received a doctorate at the University of Michigan, she in anthropology, he in music composition as well as a master’s degree in the subject there.
Dr. Romero graduated from San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and is now the performance librarian at the Manhattan School of Music, as well as the librarian for the New York Pops and Pinchas Zuckerman, the violinist. In 2011, his composition, a quadruple concerto Doppelgänger for two solo trumpets, two solo violins and double ensemble, premiered at the San Francisco Conservatory.
Dr. Gabler, who graduated from Harvard, also received a master’s degree in nursing from Columbia, and is now a nurse practitioner in neurology for patients with Alzheimer’s disease and dementia at NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia University Irving Medical Center in Manhattan.
Although her musical tastes usually run to R&B, the following weekend she and Dr. Romero went to “Love’s Command: Sacred Poetry and Music,” a performance by the Orlando Consort, a Medieval and Renaissance vocal music quartet, at St. Mary the Virgin Church near Times Square.
“The combination of poetry and music was intriguing,’’ she said, and after the concert, they had their first kiss.
As a romantic gesture, they soon began writing letters to each other every couple of weeks.
“Yes, by U.S. mail,” said Dr. Gabler, who included a poem by Rupi Kaur, a Canadian poet, in one letter, which she had read aloud to him.
“I always wanted to find somebody to read books to or with,” she said. “Now we read to each other every night, even for five minutes.”
Dr. Romero proposed on New Year’s Eve, around their first anniversary, when they got back to her apartment from dinner at a French restaurant in Fort Greene.
“Sigrid loves books, and I work in a music library,” said Mr. Romero, and with that in mind they had planned to first legally get married at the Manhattan Marriage Bureau on June 26, and then exchange vows two days later at the Housing Works Bookshop in Lower Manhattan, expecting about 60 guests, before the coronavirus outbreak. They still plan to have a party there in June 2021.
Instead, on June 26, they were married in the garden of the First Presbyterian Church of Brooklyn in Brooklyn Heights. The Rev. Adriene Thorne, a pastor at the church, officiated, and they were surrounded by their children.
