The first time Jolyn Chen and Louis Lin became partners, it was as mixed doubles on Glen A. Wilson High School’s badminton team. It would be another two decades before they became life partners, too.
They first became aware of each other at Mesa Robles Middle School in 2001, in Hacienda Heights, Calif. Both were first-generation Americans, born to immigrant parents from Taiwan. In high school, Ms. Chen and Mr. Lin became close friends and kept in touch throughout college.
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After Ms. Chen, 34, graduated from the Collins College of Hospitality Management at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, she moved to Washington, D.C., in 2012 to work in hotel management.
Mr. Lin, 35, received a bachelor’s degree in business economics from the University of California, Santa Barbara. He then graduated from the Culinary Institute of America at Greystone, in St. Helena, Calif.
When both were back in Hacienda Heights in November 2013, Ms. Chen mentioned she had just eaten at Rose’s Luxury, a trendy small plates restaurant in Capitol Hill.
A few days later, he saw that the restaurant was looking for a cook. He was offered the job, and soon, they were apartment hunting together.
After two years, Ms. Chen began working as a food runner at Rose’s Luxury. They moved into a house with co-workers, who wondered why they weren’t dating.
“At that age, I put my best friend at a higher tier than some guy I was dating,” Ms. Chen said. And Mr. Lin was solely focused on his career. “I wasn’t able then to give someone what they deserved,” he said.
On a rare overlapping day off in April 2016 — during a time when Ms. Chen was working three jobs and Mr. Lin was putting in 16-hour days to open a new fine-dining restaurant, Pineapple & Pearls — Mr. Lin asked Ms. Chen to dinner. They went to Le Diplomate, a popular district French bistro.
Ms. Chen told Mr. Lin she was thinking about moving to a new city; she wanted to pursue interior design or art. By now, Mr. Lin realized that fine dining was not for him, and that he couldn’t imagine living in a different city than his best friend.
“I had started to care about Jolyn in a way neither of us had cared about someone before,” he said. “But it happened so slowly that we didn’t even notice.”
After dinner, as they walked back to the car, he kissed her. Ms. Chen was stunned. She described her reaction as “so not romantic.” She needed to process what it meant, in continual conversations, which went on that night and over the next month.
Though she was terrified of losing her best friend, “he was so confident and sure,” she said.
“I’ve never felt more seen and comfortable with someone,” he said. “I can be myself and not be afraid to tell her the things that embarrass me.”
He managed to win her over.
“We have our own language, both spoken and unspoken,” Ms. Chen said. “With Louis, I have nothing to hide. I feel weirdly vulnerable but not scary vulnerable. Just really comfortable.”
In 2017, they moved to Los Angeles, so she could study interior architecture through U.C.L.A.’s extension program, and in 2021, they moved to Portland, Ore., for her dream job at Jessica Helgerson Interior Design.
It was Mr. Lin’s dream to open his own restaurant, serving what he calls “first-generation American” cuisine — American food with influences from all over the world. While initially, she was only going to design the interior of his restaurant, over time, they decided she should be the restaurant’s general manager, a job she still holds today. Mr. Lin proposed in December 2022, in the demolished space where the restaurant was being built.
They opened Xiao Ye (meaning “midnight snack” in Mandarin) in Portland’s Hollywood district in October 2023, and in its first year, it made several of the city’s best restaurant lists.
They were married Oct. 6 at Hoyt Arboretum in Portland in front of 50 guests. Their high school friend Diane Lieu, who was ordained by American Marriage Ministries for the occasion, officiated.
The reception was held at Xiao Ye, where appetizers included caviar on potato chips, uni on brioche and mini lobster rolls. Prime rib, a favorite of Ms. Chen’s late father, was the main course. Shake Shack burgers and shakes were a late-night treat.
The morning of the wedding, they read their own vows to each other over coffee in Laurelhurst Park, the same ones they would later read to each other during the ceremony.
In her vows, Ms. Chen told Mr. Lin, “While I may have been the last to come around, deep down, I always knew.”
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