The day after Jared Taylor LaPine graduated from Western Michigan University in 2012, he loaded his car and drove to Los Angeles, his sights set on a career in show business. Eight years later, he was back in his native Kalamazoo, Mich., the glamour of Hollywood thoroughly out of his system.
Or at least that’s what he thought until April 2023, when he was randomly set up by a woman he barely knew with Torrey Joël DeVitto.
Ms. DeVitto, 40, is an actress who most recently starred in the NBC drama series “Chicago Med.” When she met Mr. LaPine, 34, she was living in Los Angeles but had been spending more time in Michigan at a farm she bought in 2020 in leafy Fennville, about 40 miles southwest of Grand Rapids.
The place she considered a vacation house was starting to feel more like home than Southern California, where she had rooted herself in neighborhoods like Hollywood since 2002. Her mother, Mary DeVitto, lived 15 minutes away, in Saugatuck, and her cousin Alexandra Ferenc was nearby, in Chicago.
“I loved it,” she said of the eight-acre farm, where she and Mr. LaPine now live part time with goats and ducks. “I realized I wanted to stay in Michigan.” Staying single was another matter: In 2022, when Ms. Ferenc offered to set her up with someone from Michigan, she took the bait.
Fame has been a fixture in Ms. DeVitto’s life since birth. Her father, Liberty DeVitto, was Billy Joel’s longtime drummer; she spent much of her childhood on the road with the band. Her mother’s best friend and onetime roommate is Stevie Nicks. (The two women met when Mary DeVitto worked at Grauman’s, then known as Mann’s, Chinese Theater in Los Angeles; the two looked so much alike that people insisted they meet.) “That’s how my mom met my dad,” she said. In 1981, when Mr. Joel’s band was on hiatus, Ms. Nicks hired him to drum on her first solo tour.
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The family lived in Fort Salonga, N.Y., until she was 11, then moved to Winter Park, Fla. Ms. DeVitto’s parents split up when she was 19; she has two half sisters, one older and one younger. By then, she had spent two years traveling the world as a model. At 15, Christie Brinkley, Mr. Joel’s former wife, had introduced her to an agent.
And she was starting to land meaningful acting jobs. What she called “the acting bug” bit early. At age 7, after seeing a production of “Les Misérables” on Broadway, “I was obsessed with the character Éponine,” she said. “My mom made me a costume, and I had to perform all the parts for anyone who would watch or listen.”
By 2010, she had been cast in “One Tree Hill” and had a role on “Pretty Little Liars.” Before her six seasons on “Chicago Med” started in 2015, she was earning accolades for her recurring role on “The Vampire Diaries.” Her personal life had also gotten attention. In 2011, she married the actor Paul Wesley. In 2013, they divorced.
Her romance with Mr. LaPine was different from the outset. The setting, which might have been picked by a team of location scouts who perfectly understood the pull to settle down in a friendly, nature-filled community, was part of it. Mr. LaPine’s embodiment of Kalamazoo’s even keel was, too.
With his two older brothers, Mr. LaPine runs a mechanical contracting company, R.W. LaPine. He grew up solidly suburban, riding bikes and playing in the woods. “We did all the stuff you see in coming-of-age movies,” he said. His parents, Kirk LaPine and Jill Bailley, still live in Kalamazoo. The brothers have grown R.W. LaPine from a one-man operation started by their great-grandfather in 1944 to a thriving business with 300 employees.
His flirtation with showbiz after he got his bachelor’s degree in advertising feels like a lark now. “I wanted hands-on experience with what working in the film industry was like,” he said. But bouncing between film production projects and Southern California apartments ultimately wasn’t for him. “It was perfect for my 20s, but I saw what the struggle was,” he said.
Kalamazoo, where the freeways weren’t traffic-choked and the pace was less hectic, seemed a more livable place. Maturity was a factor, too. “Certain things had become important to me as I got older,” he said, “including everything that comes with not living in a big city.”
Mr. LaPine had been home a little more than three years when Ms. Ferenc sent him an Instagram message. The two had met a few times when he was in college and she was bartending at Y Bar, a local watering hole. But according to both, she was more acquaintance than friend.
“I remembered him because there was something about him,” Ms. Ferenc said. “He seemed like a genuinely nice guy, and he always had a good reputation.” She got right to the point in her April 2023 message. “I said, ‘Hey, Jared, are you single?’” Once he confirmed he was — Mr. LaPine has never been married — she asked if he wanted to meet her cousin. Then she sent him Ms. DeVitto’s profile.
“First I saw her picture and I said, ‘Yes, absolutely, I’ll gladly meet up with this person,’” Mr. LaPine said. When he saw she had a million followers, he thought twice. “I told Alex I think she sent me the wrong profile. I thought I was being catfished.” A month later, after initiating a text correspondence with Ms. DeVitto that fully consumed him — “I remember being out with friends and not even being present with them, they were becoming background noise,” he said — they met for a first date.
Mr. LaPine drove 50 minutes to Fennville on May 5 to Ms. DeVitto’s favorite local restaurant, the aptly named Salt of the Earth. By the end of the evening, his face hurt from smiling. They talked about all the things they discovered they had in common, especially their love of books (“East of Eden,” coincidentally, is their mutual favorite).
“It was perfect,” Ms. DeVitto said. “I knew after that first date I didn’t have any interest in seeing anyone else.” By summer, they were in love and committed. By fall, they bought a house together in Kalamazoo. And a prediction her castmates in the Hallmark movie “Love’s Greek to Me” had made that April, while she and Mr. LaPine were still in the texting phase, no longer seemed far-fetched. “They said, ‘You’re going to marry him.’” At the time, “I was like, oh, please.”
Mr. LaPine still wonders how the stars aligned to connect him with Ms. DeVitto, why Ms. Ferenc chose him for the setup. “I question it every single day,” he said. But Ms. DeVitto doesn’t.
“Jared has the best personality,” she said. “He’s a family guy, and he’s also one of the most nostalgic, sentimental guys. I’ve never felt so safe in a relationship.”
Last year, on Sept. 1, while walking on a trail at the farm, Mr. LaPine dropped to one knee and proposed. “I was kind of in a mood that day,” Ms. DeVitto said. “That totally turned it around.” She had seen it coming, though. “We had talked for so long about wanting all the same things, about wanting to get married, wanting to have kids. It came early in our relationship, but it wasn’t a shock to me.”
On Sept. 14, Ms. DeVitto and Mr. LaPine were married in the garden at the Inisfree Estate in Pullman, Mich., near the farm in Fennville. Ms. Ferenc, who said she now considers herself “the hero of the family” for fixing them up, became a Universal Life Church minister to officiate. Helping to pull off the “love wedding” for 132 guests the bride envisioned were 11 bridesmaids and 11 groomsmen. Her baby bump added to a sense that love was in the air: In November, the couple are expecting a daughter.
Ms. DeVitto, who had to make a last-minute decision about what dress to wear because of her expanding middle, wore an ivory Grace Loves Lace wedding gown with an open back, a minor victory because it was her first choice and she didn’t have to squeeze into a backup. Mr. LaPine wore an emerald green suit. As Mr. DeVitto walked his daughter down a grassy aisle, the crowd stood and wiped tears.
Ms. Ferenc had been nervous about officiating. But the crowd hung on her every word as she outlined the couple’s qualities: “Torrey has this incredible way of making you feel like you’re the most important person in the room,” she said. And Mr. LaPine is “the good guy, the nice guy, the slightly crazy life-of-the-party guy but also the bookworm.”
Just after she pronounced them married, a riot of confetti showered the couple as they recessed down the aisle. When they approached their wedding planner, Emily Wentland, who awaited them at the end, Mr. LaPine whispered something Ms. Wentland overheard. “He told her how beautiful she looked,” she said. “It’s true. Everyone could see how much they love each other.”
ON THIS DAY
When Sept. 14, 2024
Where The Inisfree Estate, Pullman, Mich.
Stolen Moments At a reception on the estate following the ceremony, the couple sneaked away for 15 minutes to read each other handwritten vows. “We wanted to have a private moment,” Ms. DeVitto said. But not before the ceremony. “I was very insistent on not seeing Jared prior.”
Star Studded Castmates from “Chicago Med” who made the trip to Michigan for the wedding included Nick Gehlfuss, Arielle Kebbel, Marina Squerciati, Ian Harding, Timothy Granaderos, Jessie Baylin and S. Epatha Merkerson were among the other celebrities there.
Feeling it Out Ms. DeVitto is taking time off from acting before the baby is due. “But after that it’s more about taking it one day at a time,” she said. “I’ll know the time is right when I feel it.” She is not taking time off from her work as a philanthropist. In addition to serving on the board of SafeBAE, an organization that works to prevent sexual violence among teens, she has partnered with groups including the American Civil Liberties Union, the National Abortion Federation and MoveOn for the#BansOffOurBodies campaign.
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