The Rev. William Howard Critzman and Patrick Willingham were married Sept. 7 at Old South Haven Presbyterian Church in Brookhaven Hamlet, N.Y. The Rev. Micah Bucey, a United Church of Christ minister, performed the ceremony.
Mr. Critzman (left), 40, is the senior minister of West End Collegiate Church in Manhattan. He graduated cum laude from Wagner College and has a master’s degree in divinity from Union Theological Seminary in New York. He is also a resident in psychoanalytic training at the Blanton-Peale Institute and Counseling Center in Manhattan.
He is a son of Carol A. Peed of Crofton, Md., and the late Richard Frankhouser, his stepfather.
Mr. Willingham, 52, is the executive director of New York City’s Public Theater and the former president and chief operating officer of the Blue Man Group. He graduated with honors from the University of Wyoming and has a Master of Fine Arts in performing arts management from Brooklyn College. Mr. Willingham serves on the board of EMC Arts, an arts consultancy.
He is a son of Mary C. Willingham of Cheyenne, Wyo., and the late William N. Willingham.
Mr. Willingham’s previous marriage ended in divorce.
Mr. Critzman and Mr. Willingham met in August 2016 in Bellport, N.Y., where both had decamped for a weeklong getaway from Manhattan. Each had settled in at vacant houses owned by friends in the small town on Long Island’s South Shore with just their dogs, Pink (Mr. Critzman’s German Sheperd mixed breed) and Mr. Hazel, shown above, (Mr. Willingham’s Chihuahua mixed breed), for company.
“I was thinking, this will be a nice, quiet week to myself,” Mr. Critzman said. “I’ll can tomatoes and read and putz around.” Mr. Willingham had recently divorced and intended to use the week to help reset his life.
Pink and Mr. Hazel seemed to have other ideas. “Our dogs drew themselves to one another when we were both on a walk down Main Street,” Mr. Critzman said.
While the dogs got to know each other, Mr. Willingham invited Mr. Critzman to the house he was borrowing for a swim and margaritas. The next night, they attended a production of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” at the town’s Gateway Playhouse.
“It was kind of hysterical, because both of us have somewhat public profiles in the city, and they’re somewhat serious profiles, and in Bellport we could just hang out and do fun stuff like go see ‘Rocky Horror,’” Mr. Willingham said.
By the end of the week, they had spent most of their vacations together. Back in Manhattan, they realized the relationship was more than a summer fling.
“There was definitely a sense of inevitability from the moment we first met,” Mr. Willingham said. In 2017, they bought a house of their own in Bellport; in 2018, they started thinking about marriage.
“We said to ourselves, You know, we have mortgages and debt together,” Mr. Critzman said. “We might want to commemorate something positive as well and be more than business partners.”
Over an intimate dinner at home in November 2018, they quietly got engaged, keeping the news from friends until February so they could savor a secret together. The same emphasis on intimacy guided their wedding planning, Mr. Willingham said: “We wanted to be present for each other and our guests. We don’t want all the bells and whistles of our daily lives.”
