Emily Spears Robinson and Michael Brett Berkowitz were married July 6 at the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx. Rabbi Andrea Frank officiated.
The bride, who is 26 and works in Manhattan, is a data scientist at DataCamp, an online education company. She graduated from Rice University and received a master’s degree in management from Insead in France.
She is the daughter of Sally S. Robinson and Eric S. Robinson of Park City, Utah. The bride’s father is of counsel at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, a Manhattan law firm. Her mother, who also works in Manhattan, is the vice president of advocacy and issues and former president of the New York State League of Women Voters.
The groom, who is 32 and works in Manhattan, is a bridge professional at Bridge with Larry Cohen, a company based in Delray Beach, Fla., that teaches the card game, often on cruises and in clubs. The groom graduated from Wake Forest.
He is the son of Lisa H. Berkowitz and David L. Berkowitz of Boca Raton, Fla. The groom’s parents are world champion bridge players. His mother, who is retired, taught bridge at various clubs in New York. His father retired as an options trader on the floor of the American Stock Exchange.
The couple met in the summer of 2014 at a club in New York that Mr. Berkowitz managed at the time.
It wasn’t too difficult for Mr. Berkowitz, then 27, to pick Ms. Robinson, then 21, out of the crowd.
“She was wearing this beautiful sundress and she just looked so glamorous,” he recalled. “She looked like a movie star. She was also one of the few people I had seen at the club who wasn’t over the age of 60.”
Ms. Robinson, who grew up in New York, was in the company of a boyfriend to watch her father and grandfather play at Aces Bridge Club. And, by the time the two met a second time, at the National American Bridge Championships in Chicago in August 2015, Ms. Robinson was single, and Mr. Berkowitz was still very much interested.
“I was thrilled to see her again,” he said.
Ms. Robinson, who was living in France at that time while attending graduate school, was home for the summer. She was eventually introduced to Mr. Berkowitz. “I thought he was handsome and smart and so funny,” she said. “I had already heard he was a terrific bridge player.”
She joined forces with Mr. Berkowitz, as his partner, in a midnight game of bridge before inviting him out for a drink afterward.
She soon told him that she had to return to Fontainebleau, France, where she was in the second year of a six-year Ph.D. program at Insead. He told her that he lived just 20 blocks from her parents’ apartment on the Upper East Side — and that he had no interest in a long-distance relationship.
“We kept it very casual at that point,” Ms. Robinson said, “but I really liked him.”
About a week before she left for France, she called him. “I kept dropping one hint after another about getting together, which he was not getting,” she said. “So finally I just asked if I could go over to see him, which appeared to make him panic a bit.”
Mr. Berkowitz was panicked “about having to clean up my apartment,” he said.
He invited her over and they began another conversation, “and we both felt this incredible connection,” Mr. Berkowitz said. “We had a lot more in common than just bridge.”
They continued talking and texting in the ensuing days and soon Mr. Berkowitz was feeling that a long-distance relationship might not be such a bad idea. Almost a year later, in June 2016, Ms. Robinson received a master’s degree, but decided to delay the four years she had left of her academic program at Insead to be closer with Mr. Berkowitz, and began her career as a data scientist. Two years later, he proposed.
Though Ms. Robinson conceded that Mr. Berkowitz was vastly superior at bridge, she said that she has “competed against him on occasion with some great success.”
Mr. Berkowitz began to laugh. “By great success, she means that we are still getting married,” he said.
