Elias Isadore Weiss Friedman, known as The Dogist, shoots pictures of dogs of all breeds. He is a little more particular about the humans he makes time for. If it wasn’t for Samantha Jane Cutler’s singular ability to make him laugh, he might have lost touch with her years ago.
Mr. Friedman began roaming the streets of New York City with his camera, his cargo pants pockets stuffed with treats and tennis balls, in 2013. When he started gaining traction as The Dogist on Instagram soon after, Ms. Cutler wasn’t often on his mind. This began to change in January 2017, after both got a text from his younger sister, Isabel Friedman, who was arranging a meet-up at the downtown jazz club Terra Blues.
“She said, ‘Sam will be there,’ and I thought, ‘oh, fun,’” Mr. Friedman said.
The tens of thousands of dogs he’d met by then had taught him that canines make people better. Convincing himself that a committed relationship with Ms. Cutler might reap similar rewards took him four more years and a “cowboy.”
Mr. Friedman, 37, and Ms. Cutler, 35, met as teenagers in suburban Pennsylvania; he lived in Wynnewood and she in Bryn Mawr. Both went to Friends’ Central School, a private school in Wynnewood. Ms. Cutler and Ms. Friedman, his sister, were best friends and in the same graduating class.
“I always thought she was adorable and funny,” Mr. Friedman said. “We had this banter. She would come over and we would make something up, like a skit” — both remember playacting through a scenario in which they dislike each other. “I found it charming,” he added.
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After Mr. Friedman graduated high school, he left it to his sister to keep the connection with Ms. Cutler alive. He had also gotten busy trying to figure out what he was going to do with his life.
His parents, Dr. Marisa Weiss and Dr. David Friedman, raised him, his sister, and her twin brother, Henry, in proximity to a veterinarian aunt, Dr. Alice Weiss, who supplied access to dogs and a menagerie of other animals including hamsters and potbellied pigs.
Mr. Friedman’s bachelor’s degree in psychology from Boston University wasn’t meant to shape a career centered around beagles and chihuahuas.
“I was obviously interested in the way people think,” he said. But not as much in treating patients.
“Being the Jewish son of two doctors and following in their footsteps — that pressure existed,” he said. “But it wasn’t really my calling.”
In 2010, he moved to Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and got a job as a brand strategy analyst with a consulting and design agency. He was laid off two years later, at the end of 2012. That “was a little bit of a startling thing, to be let go,” he said. But it was also a little bit thrilling.
“In the back of my mind I was happy, because I would have a chance to try something I wanted to do instead of getting the same job somewhere else,” he said. He took a cue from friends who were building startup companies, and within a year was figuring out how to make a living off the photographs of highly expressive dogs — some glamorous, some not so much — he had started shooting with his Nikon D600. Then he had an epiphany.
“I thought, what if someone could do The Sartorialist for dogs, or Humans of New York for dogs,” he said. Both are internet photo platforms that have spawned best-selling books.
Ms. Cutler had a desire to tell stories on film, which, she said, came from an earlier passion for storytelling through modern dance. She is currently a documentary film producer for Universal Studios. Her credits include the 2023 biopic “Carlos,” about Carlos Santana, and “Breakaway,” ESPN’s “30 for 30” series about the W.N.B.A. player Maya Moore.
Like Mr. Friedman, she was raised Jewish in a not particularly religious household. She has one older brother, Aaron, and two younger brothers, Jake and Charlie. Her parents, Beth and David Cutler, divorced when she was in preschool.
Before she earned a bachelor’s degree from Barnard College, where she majored in dance and English, she was drawn to the energy at the Friedmans’ house.
“His mother was an accomplished doctor, but she also had this penchant for vintage clothing,” she said. “The whole family was bohemian and artistic.” His father, a hobbyist photographer, kept a darkroom in the house that sparked his son’s love of photography.
When Ms. Friedman was organizing the 2017 jazz club meet-up in Manhattan, Ms. Cutler was living in Greenwich Village and working as a producer at a production company. Ms. Friedman was finishing a degree in Philadelphia.
“Elias and I kept bumping into each other all over New York,” she said. “We’d see each other in Union Square, in the West Village, in SoHo. We liked the same museums and the same neighborhoods.” Each time they met, Mr. Friedman would suggest they hang out and pass her his phone so she could punch in her number. “By the time he handed his phone over for the fourth time, he had four Samantha Cutlers in there,” she said. “He kept saving my number.”
But he never used it.
Ms. Cutler was still thinking of him as her friend’s funny brother the night they met at Terra Blues. “I was excited to see him and I knew we’d have a laugh,” she said. “But I wasn’t awakened to any romantic feelings.”
However, he said, “I wanted to go on a date with her.” She was game to meet him for a drink at the now-closed VBar & Cafe on Sullivan Street. But she didn’t know it was a date.
That was starting to change once they left VBar to split a burger at the nearby Minetta Tavern. “We were bantering like back in the day,” Mr. Friedman said. By the time he walked her home, they had pretended to be an old married couple bickering over their pet monkey, Sprinkles, in an attempt to confuse the bartender at Bar Veloce, their third and final stop. “We had the same sense of humor,” he said.
Ms. Cutler knew the energy between them had shifted when they kissed in front of her apartment building. “I thought, wow, that was a date,” she said.
But the relationship sputtered. “I felt a real connection with her but had this fear, there was this intimidation, about falling in love,” he said. “I wasn’t ready to be serious, and I didn’t want to squander the opportunity.”
She didn’t take it personally. “He was about to go on tour with his second book,” she said. “The Dogist Puppies” came out in 2017.
The mutual fondness they had clung to since childhood was still there during sporadic get-togethers in New York over the next few years. It became a comfort to Mr. Friedman. “I had gotten a little bit of Dogist fame,” he said. “There was sort of a perception of, she knew me when.”
Once Covid hit, he was no longer counting on his sister to keep tabs on Ms. Cutler.
“I think the perspective for lots of people at that moment was, the world is seemingly ending,” he said. “Who do I want to talk to? For me, it was Sam.”
In early March 2020, just before the city went into lockdown, they met for a date. Then, on March 20, Ms. Cutler went home to Bryn Mawr and stayed for seven months. Mr. Friedman left New York for his family’s home in Woods Hole, Mass.
The Dogist had been living without a dog of his own for years. When he adopted Elsa, a husky mix, from a rescue organization soon after, he knew Ms. Cutler would share his enthusiasm. She had been taking care of her father’s dog, Bari White, during Covid. They talked daily on FaceTime. “I really like Sam’s dog energy,” he said. “I loved the way she would talk to Elsa. I also wanted to talk to Sam in general.”
Both were back in New York in January 2021, when Ms. Cutler texted Mr. Friedman to ask a favor. A friend had gotten a new golden retriever puppy named Cowboy. “It was always her dream to be on The Dogist,” she said. Mr. Friedman agreed to meet the friend, Ms. Cutler and Cowboy for a shoot in SoHo.
Elsa, by then, had changed Mr. Friedman. “She softened me and made me realize I deserve to be loved,” he said.
When the SoHo shoot wrapped, “I had come to my senses,” he said. “After months of FaceTiming, seeing Sam in real life, I had a ‘what am I waiting for?’ moment.”
The Dogist fans felt the love in a different way: Cowboy “broke the internet,” Mr. Friedman said. “He was extremely good-looking. His metrics were off the charts.”
In January 2022, at the end of a cross-country road trip with Elsa in the back seat, Mr. Friedman proposed to Ms. Cutler on a secluded beach in Malibu, Calif. In April 2024, they moved into an apartment in Chelsea.
Ms. Friedman, a Universal Life Church minister, officiated their March 1 wedding before 145 guests at the Pérez Art Museum Miami. Ms. Cutler wore an ivory 1998 Galliano for Dior gown with a custom veil; Elsa, in a custom matching dress, was the dog of honor. Mr. Friedman wore a Tom Ford suit.
Under a huppah, Ms. Friedman made the case that the marriage was meant to be. “In some ways, today was inevitable,” she said. “In high school, I could always count on seeing you two laughing together in a corner. There was an obvious ease, a kinship and a shared sense of humor.”
She might have taken credit for being the architect of their love story, but she didn’t.
Instead, “shout out Cowboy the yenta,” she said, before Mr. Friedman smashed a glass to celebrate the start of their forever.
On This Day
When March 1, 2025
Where The Pérez Art Museum Miami
Something Chewed Mr. Friedman’s Tom Ford suit made him feel “like a million bucks,” he said. It was complemented by his favorite accessory: a pair of canine-nibbled Wayfarers. His cuff links were silver bulldogs.
Simply the Best In handwritten vows, Ms. Cutler told Mr. Friedman her greatest wish for a future partner was simple: “I just want to be with the best guy, the guy who my friends say, ‘God, he’s the best!’,” she said. “And here you are.” For her walk down the aisle, she was accompanied by a local children’s choir singing an a cappella version of the classic song “You’re All I Need to Get By.”
I Do, Round Two The couple asked Ms. Friedman to be their officiant via a hand-delivered letter. “I read it, cried, and immediately said yes,” she said. A few months earlier, she had officiated her twin’s wedding. “I was honored to get to marry both my brothers, and my best friend since middle school.”
Tail End A reception, also at the museum, featured napkins showcasing love notes the couple had written to each other over the years, including a few dedicated to Elsa. At an after-party, a team of greeters wearing lampshades on their heads led guests into “Elsa’s Speakeasy” for specialty cocktails and dancing.
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