Lauren Elizabeth Salz and Omer Rosenhand are to be married May 26 at Gateway Canyons Resort and Spa in Gateway, Colo. Rabbi Mendel Mintz is to officiate.
The bride, 31, is a founder and chief executive of Sealed, a financial technology company that uses energy-efficiency savings to finance home improvements. She graduated cum laude from Barnard.
She is the daughter of Dr. Linda Hsueh and Dr. Alan G. Salz of Bridgewater, N.J.
The groom, 35, is the chief financial officer of Mayflower Botanicals, a medical marijuana company in Holland, Mass., of which he is a founder. In March, the company was acquired by Vireo Health International, a marijuana company in Minneapolis. He graduated cum laude from Brandeis, from which he also received a master’s degree in international economics and finance.
He is a son of Ziva Rosenhand and Levi Rosenhand of Worcester, Mass.
The couple had worked at the same WeWork offices in Midtown Manhattan for 10 months in 2014, but they didn’t meet until three years later when a mutual friend set them up. “She told me he was into sailing, traveling, was really fun and a gentleman,” said Ms. Salz, whose friend also mentioned he was a “C.F.O. of a start-up.”
Ms. Salz had a good feeling about him. She even told her paternal grandmother about the upcoming date just before going out on the Friday of Labor Day weekend. They met at the Manhattan Cricket Club, a cocktail lounge on the Upper West Side.
Then she asked: “What does your start-up do?”
“You get a range of different reactions,” said Mr. Rosenhand, regarding his medical marijuana business.
He gingerly approached the subject by emphasizing the medical in medical marijuana, and stressed that he had never tried it, which she considered “a very vague possibility.”
“This is never going to work,’’ Ms. Salz recalled thinking.
Although she made up her mind to let their friend know just that, she kept her poker face the entire evening.
“She’s a very cool customer,’’ said Mr. Rosenhand, who had no clue, and was taken with her.
“Her obvious intelligence was not coupled with any sort of arrogance,’’ he said. “By God she just has this infectious smile. She smiles with her eyes.”
He enthusiastically texted her the next evening about a second date, before she got in touch with their friend, who was traveling. She decided to give him a second chance, focusing on what they had in common.
“We had unexpected professions as Republicans,” she said. “I run an energy-efficiency company. He’s a nonuser running a marijuana company.’’
Two days later they went to a restaurant in Manhattan’s Union Square area, and then played a few games of pool at Amsterdam Billiards nearby. He gave her a quick kiss good night, and a few days later they played basketball and went rock climbing in his building’s gym. A few weeks later he took her sailing.
“I was starting to like to him,’’ she said. “I liked how he was close to his family and had a lot of close friends he had known for a long time.”
About 10 weeks in she told one of her best friends she thought he was the one, and began wondering how her parents would react to his nontraditional job.
“I’m very close to my parents,” she said. “I’ve always lived within an hour of them. Their opinion matters. If they didn’t approve, it would have been difficult.”
In mid-November her parents met Mr. Rosenhand over dinner at Park Avenue Autumn near Madison Park, and before dessert her father got right to the point, but not pointedly.
“‘Omer I understand you’re in the marijuana business,’” Mr. Rosenhand recalled her father saying, and while he explained the business in great detail her father’s eyes started closing.
“It was a victory by boredom,’’ Mr. Rosenhand said.
A couple of weeks later Ms. Salz introduced him to her paternal grandmother, who only knew he worked in finance. “My grandmother loved him,” said Ms. Salz, adding that her grandmother died in April last year. “I felt I wanted Omer to be part of my family and not just dating me.”
As for his start-up, “I totally forgot that it was ever a problem,’’ Ms. Salz said. On July 4, 2018, he proposed to her with her grandmother’s ring.
