Tina Marie Survilla Lindell and Cesar Alejandro Kuriyama’s relationship began with what Ms. Survilla Lindell calls a “tweet cute.”
In March 2020, Caveat, a Speakeasy-style bar and event space on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, announced that it was closing temporarily because of the pandemic. Ms. Survilla Lindell, a regular patron, tweeted out a message of support. It was seen and liked by Mr. Kuriyama, who also frequented Caveat.
The two soon began to follow each other on Twitter, now known as X. Mr. Kuriyama wanted to learn more about bird watching, a pastime and popular tweeting subject of Ms. Survilla Lindell’s. And she was pleasantly surprised to discover that Mr. Kuriyama was the creator of 1 Second Everyday, an app that records one second of video every day and chronologically edits them together. She’d been using it for the past year to chronicle her life in New York City.
“It was one of my favorite apps,” Ms. Survilla Lindell, 35, said. “I like to believe that he was making my life better even before we met.”
[Click here to binge read this week’s featured couples.]
Many months later, they each learned that the other was single. They began corresponding via direct messages more regularly, often chatting late into the night and sharing details about their lives. Mr. Kuriyama, who has a bachelor’s degree in computer graphics from Pratt Institute, shared his obsession with the concept of time, which, fittingly, inspired his app.
Ms. Survilla Lindell discussed her love of science fiction and space. And she shared another tidbit: that she had never eaten a Burger King Whopper. Mr. Kuriyama suggested that she try one and offered to be there when she did so he could record it as that day’s “one second” of footage.
“I’m really shy and not one to easily ask someone out,” Mr. Kuriyama, 43, said. “I snuck in the ‘we should have a Whopper together’ as a pseudo first-date attempt.”
On Jan. 18, 2021, at the peak of the pandemic and almost a year after they first connected on social media, Ms. Survilla Lindell and Mr. Kuriyama met in person.
“I like to say that Cesar and I met at the end of the world,” Ms. Survilla Lindell said. “New York City was a ghost town.”
Both had received Covid vaccinations earlier that month. Ms. Survilla Lindell was working in health care, as a certified ophthalmic assistant at a private practice, and Mr. Kuriyama was eligible because he had been caring for his elderly parents in New Jersey at the time.
Mr. Kuriyama met Ms. Survilla Lindell outside her office on the Upper East Side. It was a frigid day that exuded remarkable warmth.
“He had the biggest smile on his face,” Ms. Survilla Lindell said. “He picked me up in his arms and he hugged me so tight that my feet were dangling. I remember thinking: ‘I’m done for.’”
The pair attempted a walk in Central Park, but it was too cold. Mr. Kuriyama then drove them to a Burger King in Queens and later captured a one-second video of Ms. Survilla Lindell sampling her first Whopper.
“It was just like I envisioned,” Mr. Kuriyama said.
That evening, they had a proper dinner, seated outside of a restaurant in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. At the end of the day, Mr. Kuriyama took a photograph to commemorate their first date. He said he knew that day that he had found the person he’d been looking for his whole life.
Early into their relationship, Mr. Kuriyama encouraged Ms. Survilla Lindell, who has a bachelor’s degree in linguistics from the University of Nebraska Omaha, to follow her longtime dream of becoming an art writer and curator. In August 2021, she left health care and currently works as a creative marketing manager at HUG, a global community for artists and art lovers.
In July 2023, Mr. Kuriyama proposed. He had orchestrated a surprise engagement party at Caveat, which reopened in 2021, with a guest list that included Ms. Survilla Lindell’s two sisters, one of whom was living at Germany at the time.
“Surprises are really important to me,” she said. “On that first date, Cesar told me: ‘Surprises are the only gift you can’t give yourself.’”
The couple, who resides in Cliffside Park, N.J., were married Oct. 24, at Mountain Creek Waterpark in Vernon, N.J. Guests rode a gondola up a hill, which Ms. Survilla Lindell said was meant to evoke an “ascent into space.” They were married by Aaron Rasmussen, a friend of the couple ordained by the Universal Life Church; he wore a NASA replica spacesuit complete with a helmet.
The couple gave their wedding a title, “Adventures in Spacetime,” and went by special handles: Space Girl Tina and Timehacker Cesar. The groom dressed in a red velvet tuxedo while the bride wore a custom white gown that was covered in silver glitter. Ms. Survilla Lindell’s wedding ring features a salt and pepper diamond representative of the moon with a center stone surrounded by other stones — sapphire, garnet, topaz and tourmaline — that represent the planets in the solar system.
“The future with Cesar looks a lot like the past several years with Cesar,” Ms. Survilla Lindell said. “We both love art and nerdy things: science fiction and space, and chasing whatever fun thing is around the corner.”
The post Two Bar Patrons Step Into a Twitter Feed appeared first on New York Times.
