Deborah Jennifer Yarchun was shocked when her buddy swiped left on Benjamin Ernest Parr.
“Why would you try this?” she requested of her buddy’s rejection of Mr. Parr on the League, a courting app for bold individuals.
She had been drawn to his photograph. “He simply appeared so blissful and type,” Ms. Yarchun stated.
A couple of weeks later, Ms. Yarchun got here throughout Mr. Parr on the identical app. She rapidly swiped proper.
On Feb. 3, 2018, Ms. Yarchun wore a purple turtleneck sweater to their first date, at Compagnie des Vins Surnaturels, a wine bar in SoHo. When she admitted she had been impressed by Mr. Parr’s 2015 ebook, “Captivology: The Science of Capturing Folks’s Consideration” — a girl sporting purple on a date is prone to immediate a person to take a seat nearer, Mr. Parr had written — Mr. Parr’s eyes lit up.
The six-hour date flew by. So did their second date, after they walked right into a Chelsea bar that occurred to be internet hosting a burlesque present. On their third date — Valentine’s Day — Ms. Yarchun and Mr. Parr formally grew to become a pair.
“I saved considering, ‘What’s the catch?’” stated Ms. Yarchun, 38. “It turned on the market was no catch. He was the catch.”
They bonded over their shared love for writing. Ms. Yarchun’s 2019 play, “Drive,” received Dartmouth’s Neukom Institute Literary Award for Playwriting, and he or she has taught playwriting on the College of Iowa and Indiana College. Ms. Yarchun graduated from Drexel College with a bachelor’s diploma in screenwriting and playwriting, after which earned her M.F.A. in playwriting from the College of Iowa. She grew up in New Jersey and Germany earlier than her household settled down in Austin, Texas.
Mr. Parr, 39, is a founding father of a pair of synthetic intelligence firms, Octane AI and Idea Forge Ventures, and writes a daily column for The Data. A local of Princeton, Sick., Mr. Parr graduated from Northwestern College with a double main in political science and science in human tradition.
In November 2019, Ms. Yarchun moved into Mr. Parr’s house in NoLIta. The following day, the house immediately above theirs caught on hearth, leaving their residence with intensive water injury. They spent the subsequent few months bouncing round New York, Los Angeles and Fort Value, Texas, earlier than planning to return to Manhattan in March 2020.
Two days earlier than their scheduled transfer to a subleased house, nonetheless, they realized the area had mattress bugs. Mr. Parr and Ms. Yarchun, who had been staying in a close-by lodge, canceled the sublease and fled to an Airbnb in Woodstock, N.Y. It proved to be prescient: By the top of the month, New York, like a lot of the world, was in pandemic lockdown.
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So Ms. Yarchun and Mr. Parr embraced their nomadic life-style, selecting a brand new location every month, reserving an Airbnb and hitting the street.
“It was tremendous clear how sturdy our relationship was, and the way a lot we loved spending time collectively,” Mr. Parr stated.
They hung out on a farm in Vermont and in a cottage within the Poconos. They visited Niagara Falls and the Grand Canyon. They ate Thanksgiving dinner on a rock simply over Arizona’s border with New Mexico, feasting on turkey, cranberry sauce and mashed potatoes from Cracker Barrel because the solar set.
“I used to be like, ‘How are we by no means having fights in any respect?’” Ms. Yarchun stated. “When you can pack your life right into a automotive collectively time and again and your relationship survives, you may as properly get married.”
In Might 2021, they moved right into a everlasting house in Culver Metropolis, Calif. Then, on March 4, 2023, Mr. Parr proposed to Ms. Yarchun. She stated sure.
They have been married on April 6 on the Cedar Bend in Austin in entrance of 91 friends. Christina Beleck, a Common Life Church minister and the mother-in-law of Ms. Yarchun’s youthful brother Daniel, officiated. They included each Jewish and Thai traditions, a nod to Ms. Yarchun and Mr. Parr’s respective backgrounds. The ceremony was held underneath a huppah and so they acquired two conventional Thai marriage ceremony blessings. Through the cocktail hour, they served rugelach, a Jewish pastry, and Thai summer season rolls.
Earlier than friends dined on fajitas, all eyes turned to Ms. Yarchun and Mr. Parr for his or her first dance to “Good Day for Marrying You,” by Dave Barnes. The music had usually come up randomly on Spotify as they traversed the nation, their bond deepening with each mile.
“I’m not a pure dancer, however when it got here on my physique couldn’t assist dancing to it,” Ms. Yarchun stated. “I’d simply be overcome with pleasure on the concept of marrying Ben.”
