As so often happens on a first date, Yuming Albert Chiu shared more than he ought to have on the night he met Dr. Shilpen Ajit Patel for dinner, in San Mateo, Calif., in February 2018.
Following their meal at a hot-pot place, where they had a fantastic time despite the awful food and worse wine, Mr. Chiu said, he walked Dr. Patel to the train station.
“As the train was coming in, I thought, how romantic would it be if I made out with him?” said Dr. Patel, who leaned in for a kiss. “A little Humphrey Bogart old-time movie action.”
After a split second’s hesitation, Mr. Chiu thought, “Why not?”
The kiss was everything Dr. Patel had hoped for (“It was magical and fireworks and stars and unicorns and rainbows!” he said), plus a little something extra: Mr. Chiu had a strain of the flu.
Soon it spread to Dr. Patel, who had just recuperated from another bout of the flu that forced him to postpone an earlier meeting the two had arranged after matching on the dating app Hinge that January.
Needless to say, their second date was also delayed.
“Oops,” Mr. Chiu said.
The two first connected on Tinder months earlier, in the summer of 2017, but did not meet: Their brief exchange on the dating app occurred just as Dr. Patel, who was in the Bay Area for a job interview, was on the way back to Seattle, where he then lived. By the time they matched again, on Hinge, Dr. Patel had accepted the job and moved to Redwood City, Calif., closer to Mr. Chiu’s home in San Francisco.
“I recognized him,” said Mr. Chiu, 36, who graduated from University of California, Los Angeles and received an M.B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania.
But Dr. Patel, 46, who graduated summa cum laude from Houston Baptist University and received a medical degree from the University of Texas Medical Branch, “didn’t recognize me,” Mr. Chiu added.
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Once it finally happened, their second date, on Valentine’s Day in 2018, was just as lively as the first.
“Both of us realized we are both very intense, very intentional,” Mr. Chiu said.
“We share the same values,” Dr. Patel said, and “are very family-oriented.”
Before the spring of 2018 had ended, they were in love.
When the pandemic struck in 2020, the two were living together in Mr. Chiu’s 650-square-foot condominium in the Dolores Heights section of San Francisco, and had just begun renovating the condominium in the city’s Twin Peaks neighborhood where they now live. While that time brought disagreements and challenges, such as the loss of half their contractors with the arrival of Covid, the togetherness deepened their relationship.
“It was at that moment, I was like, ‘Oh, I really want to marry this guy because when the world stops, this is who I want to be with,’” said Mr. Chiu, the senior director for oncology marketing at Guardant Health in Palo Alto, Calif.
“I’ve never met someone who is constantly trying to do better in the relationship,” said Dr. Patel, a radiation oncologist who is now a principal medical director in health equity and inclusive research at Genentech, the biotechnology company in South San Francisco, Calif.
On May 7, the two were married in a ceremony that reflected both Indian and Chinese wedding traditions at Casa Real at Ruby Hill Winery in Pleasanton, Calif.
Sunil Kasturi, a friend who became a Universal Life minister for the occasion, officiated, with the Rev. Jonathan Smith, a nondenominational Christian minister and also a friend, taking part. The couple, who will use the surname Patel, asked all 250 of their fully vaccinated guests to take rapid tests ahead of the event.
Any attendees who might not have known everything that Mr. Chiu brought to the couple’s first date heard the story in his vows.
Dr. Patel also did not find out right away that Mr. Chiu had the flu when they shared their first kiss. But by the time Mr. Chiu told him six months later, they were already deeply in love.
“He was just like, I can’t believe it,” Mr. Chiu said. “I was like, Yeah. But look at us now!”
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