Brianna Nicole Irene Brown and Kevin Russell Malinak shared their first kiss in January 2015 on the night they met — more than a year before their first official date.
The two were introduced at a Stanford mixer by mutual friends, Anna Blue and Reed Johnson, who were dating. Mr. Malinak was a senior at the university, and Ms. Brown was a junior.
The couple, who are now married, thought Mr. Malinak “would be a great match for me,” Ms. Brown said.
So they made small talk that night in 2015, but Ms. Brown noticed Mr. Malinak’s nervousness. “He was stammering and very fidgety.” To put him at ease, she spontaneously kissed him as they stood in the corner of a room. “I relaxed right away,” he said.
Mr. Malinak, now 31, and Ms. Brown, 30, got to know each other over the next few months, hanging out in groups with friends. “I thought she was cute and felt comfortable being around her, but our interaction was superficial,” Mr. Malinak said. He graduated that June, and they amicably parted ways.
They reconnected in May 2016, when Mr. Malinak, who was working as a video game developer in Dallas, visited Stanford to attend a reunion for his fraternity, Sigma Phi Epsilon. “When I knew about my trip, Brianna came to mind,” he said. “I told Reed and Anna that I’d like to reconnect, so they planned for the four of us to attend a SigEp beer tasting.”
“We laughed and told jokes,” Mr. Malinak said. “My heart was fluttering being with Brianna.”
Ms. Brown was hesitant. “It was nice to see Kevin again, but I was tentative about a relationship with someone who lived far away,” she said.
They communicated by email and phone throughout the summer. When Mr. Malinak returned to the Bay Area over Labor Day to visit friends, they met during a group outing to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. “We had the best time seeing and talking about the art,” Mr. Malinak said.
By then, Ms. Brown’s interest in Mr. Malinak was piqued. “He was so into the art but in an unpretentious way,” she said. “I was very engaged.”
Mr. Malinak planned to revisit the Bay Area to see her that October.
In October 2016, they had their first official date at the now-closed Palo Alto, Calif., restaurant Pampas Brazilian Steakhouse, where they talked endlessly about their upbringings, career goals and life dreams. “I told Kevin I wanted to get a Ph.D., which had to factor into our relationship if we were going to be together long-term,” Ms. Brown said. “At that point, it was obvious that this wasn’t a fling.”
With Mr. Malinak living in Dallas, their courtship intensified from afar. “We used to talk for hours into the night and exchanged long emails,” Mr. Malinak said.
A month later, in November 2016, Ms. Brown noticed blood in her urine. After a series of tests, she was diagnosed with Stage 2 kidney cancer. Treatment entailed chemotherapy, surgery to remove the affected kidney and radiation.
“The doctors told me that I would likely be OK, but they weren’t sure,” Ms. Brown said.
Mr. Malinak stood by her side. “We were already in our relationship for the long haul,” he said.
Ms. Brown began her treatment at Stanford and Mr. Malinak traveled between Dallas and the Bay Area several times a month to support her. She kept attending classes, even through her surgery. “I lost my appetite and was weak, but school was a distraction,” Ms. Brown said. She graduated in June 2017, close to the end of her treatment.
Ms. Brown, who grew up in Sacramento, has a bachelor’s degree in earth systems and human biology from Stanford and is currently a Ph.D. candidate at Michigan State University in plant biology.
Mr. Malinak was raised in Potomac, Md., and holds a bachelor’s degree in computer science from Stanford. He works remotely as an artificial intelligence programmer for id Software, a video game developer based in Richardson, Texas.
After graduation, Ms. Brown took six months off to focus on her health and moved to her childhood home in Sacramento to live with her mother and stepfather, Irene and Anthony Hernandez. Mr. Malinak continued to travel to the West Coast to see her.
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By January 2018, Ms. Brown said that she was closer to her “old self” and ready to settle in Dallas with Mr. Malinak and start a job as a sustainability consultant for a real estate company.
The couple lived together for more than two years. They each worked 12-hour days, played video games to decompress and vacationed in Spain and Portugal. “We were relishing our time,” Mr. Malinak said. “We had already designed Brianna’s wedding ring. I was just waiting to propose.”
Ms. Brown moved to Lansing, Mich., to start her PhD. program in July 2021, and nine months later Mr. Malinak joined her and continued his job remotely. The couple, who became engaged in June 2022, continue to live in Lansing.
On Dec. 8, Mr. Malinak and Ms. Brown wed before 95 guests at Planterra Conservatory in West Bloomfield Township, Mich. Emily Meade, Mr. Malinak’s cousin and a minister ordained by the American Marriage Ministries for the occasion, officiated.
After the ceremony, they danced to the slow instrumental song “Immunity” by Jon Hopkins and shared a candlelit dinner with family and friends. “There was a lot of crying all night,” Ms. Brown said. “We’ve already been through so much together, and the day celebrated our lives so far and our future.”
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