On a flight back to New York City from Germany in August 2021, Jonathan-Bruce James King messaged a Tinder match, Mary Kathryn Ann Burke, to ask her out, thinking they could meet sometime in the following week or two.
Ms. Burke was spending the summer in Montauk, N.Y., but when she received Mr. King’s text, she happened to be in New York City — her mother had just been admitted to the hospital. She explained the situation to Mr. King, and he told her that if she needed a break that evening, he would meet her wherever she wanted.
“I finished at the hospital, and I thought two things: My mother would tell me to go, and I could extra use a drink,” Ms. Burke said.
When they met that evening at the Upper West Side location of the Vin Sur Vingt Wine Bar in Manhattan, Mr. King said he quickly realized Ms. Burke was “wickedly funny.” Not only that, he said, but “I can’t get away with anything with her because she, like, fact-checked me midsentence.”
Ms. Burke was surprised by how well the date turned out. “I was having a great time, and I had just come off one of the hardest days of my life up to that point,” she said.
Ms. Burke, 41, is a senior editorial producer at ABC News, where she has worked for 18 years, since graduating from Harvard with a bachelor’s degree in English and American literature and languages. Ms. Burke grew up in Yorkville, Manhattan, with parents who were public school teachers.
Mr. King, 37, who goes by Jonathan, grew up in Oakland, Calif, the son of psychotherapists. He has a bachelor’s degree in theater arts from Washington University in St. Louis. For a decade after graduating, he worked as an actor in New York until a knee injury led him to theater management. In May, he received an M.B.A. from the Isenberg School of Management at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and he now works as a business development executive at Infosys, an information technology and consulting company.
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Mr. King’s and Ms. Burke’s relationship developed slowly that fall until Mr. King had a realization in December.
“‘Oh, I love this person,’” he recalled thinking. “‘I’m all in.’”
Ms. Burke reached the same conclusion a month later. One of the first big events they attended as a couple was the opening weekend of Hasty Pudding Theatricals, a theater company Ms. Burke was a producer of and remains passionate about.
“I’ve never missed going up for a show,” she said.
Four months later, in June 2022, Ms. Burke’s mother died of complications related to dementia.
“It was a big decision for me if Jonathan would walk with us behind the coffin,” Ms. Burke said. “I’ve known this person for 10 months. It’s a big statement to my community but also to myself.”
So she asked her father, who responded immediately with a resounding yes. “Jonathan was kind of this miracle of that period of time, that he was there at the exact moment I needed it most,” she said.
On June 1, 2023, Ms. Burke was on the subway on the way to meet Mr. King in Brooklyn when she realized she felt strangely antsy. “I couldn’t read, so I was listening to Taylor Swift because I was nervous,” said Ms. Burke, who had a feeling a proposal was imminent.
She was right. He proposed while rehearsing several songs from a made-up cabaret act with their friend, Nancy Winston, a pianist, at the Montauk Club, a Brooklyn social club where he is a member.
Ms. Burke and Mr. King were married Sept. 21 at the Church of St. Ignatius of Loyola on the Upper East Side, with the Rev. Stephen Katsouros, a Jesuit priest, officiating. He was the president of Loyola School when Ms. Burke was a student there.
After the ceremony, the 265 guests made their way to Valerie, a Midtown restaurant and cocktail bar. There, Extra Syrup Horns, a brass band, surprised them with a performance and led them to the reception at the nearby Harvard Club, where Ms. Burke is a chair of the programs committee.
“My mom would always say, ‘You should get married here one day,’” Ms. Burke said of the Harvard Club. “When I was in my 20s, I told my mom, ‘I don’t know if it’s very bridal.’ There’s taxidermy, wood-paneled walls, Chesterfield couches, leather furniture. And she answered, ‘Well, we’ll put a veil on the moose.’”
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