Jorge Ruivinho saw Sabrina Elisa Marzaro’s picture on the dating app Hinge in January 2022 and had to know more. In her wide-brimmed hat, hair swept to the side, he said, “she looked very sexy.”
A skim of her profile offered Mr. Ruivinho, 35, of Paris, a less superficial reason for liking what he saw: Ms. Marzaro was fluent in his culture. At the time, “a lot of women on Hinge were American,” he said. “I could feel that Sabrina was not the basic American tourist in Paris wanting to date a French guy.”
Ms. Marzaro, 33, came by her Parisian je ne sais quoi honestly. Though she grew up in Calabasas, Calif., she spent much of her 20s moving between France, where she started a career in the fashion industry in 2013, and Manhattan, where she and her father founded the pasta restaurant Bigoi Venezia in 2017. She was living in Paris when Mr. Ruivinho, a financial controller with the human resources company Randstad, reached out on Hinge.
The city was familiar to her by then, but life as a single woman in it still felt new. In 2016, she and a boyfriend she had met while earning a bachelor’s degree in business administration at George Washington University moved to Nice, France, where she founded the luxury fashion and cosmetics branding firm Graphite & Ink.
But in 2018, their six-year relationship ended. After a brief return to New York, where she wrote a picture book about the search for love in the age of dating apps, “Swiping for Prince Charming,” she made a permanent move in 2020 to Paris. There, she downloaded Hinge, ready for what she thought would be an “exhilarating” foray into dating in what is often called the city of love.
Exhilarating wasn’t the word she was using to describe the experience a few years later. “In hindsight I’d call it enriching and almost anthropological,” she said.
She learned the differences between dating in France and America. In France, she said, a first kiss often translated to an exclusive relationship. “You didn’t have to have ‘the talk,’” she said, about making it official. But she also learned that, even in Paris, meeting men could feel like a slog. “I was disillusioned,” she said. “People had different levels of emotional availability.”
In 2021, she was disillusioned enough to take a break from her apps. When she returned to them at the start of 2022, her first match was Mr. Ruivinho, who seemed too good to be true. “I thought he looked too handsome,” she said. She felt the same on Jan. 11, when they met in person for tea at Picchetto in the 15th arrondissement.
Mr. Ruivinho grew up in Paris and has bachelor’s and master’s degrees in business administration from the Neoma School of Business, Reims. Before he met Ms. Marzaro, his dating app dabblings were largely recreational. “It felt good to be on them because I could meet interesting girls and have fun even if I didn’t end up dating them,” he said. But he knew Ms. Marzaro would be different. “Usually my first message on Hinge was something silly, I’d ask a silly question. But with Sabrina, I was really intrigued. I wanted to ask her serious things.”
At Picchetto, the pair talked for hours on topics both serious and unserious. By the end of the first hour, Ms. Marzaro was sneaking away to text friends about their instant attraction. At 11 p.m., they kissed. In the distance, “the Eiffel Tower started glittering,” she said.
Within weeks, Ms. Marzaro was hoping her days of swiping for prince charming were behind her. Mr. Ruivinho hoped so, too. “I knew I had never before met such a wonderful girl, that it was a very special relationship,” he said.
Mr. Ruivinho’s parents live part time in his father’s native Portugal; his grandmother, Lucie Laurent, was his closest nearby relative, and among his favorite people. When he introduced the two women that spring, Ms. Laurent’s instant approval reinforced Mr. Ruivinho’s sense of rightness about falling in love with Ms. Marzaro. Ms. Laurent died that November; on a trip to the Loire Valley on March 30, 2024, Ms. Laurent’s birthday, he proposed with Ms. Laurent’s diamond engagement ring.
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Ms. Marzaro and Mr. Ruivinho were married April 25 on the beach in Malibu, Calif. Just one guest, Ms. Marzaro’s grandfather, William Fisch, attended. “Our grandparents have played important roles in our lives,” said Ms. Marzaro, who wore a 1960s-style Valentino dress. Mr. Ruivinho wore a gray suit. “We wanted him to be the only person present.”
Karen Gasbarro, the mother of one of Ms. Marzaro’s childhood friends who was ordained for the occasion through American Marriage Ministries, officiated. “It was a moment that stood outside the grasp of time,” Mr. Ruivinho said just after they were married.
In September 2025, the couple will host a wedding celebration in Grimaud, France, for friends and family. It won’t, however, dim the magic of the intimate seaside ceremony. “Being in that setting with Jorge and my grandfather made me so happy on such a deep level,” Ms. Marzaro said.
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