On the night the Philadelphia Eagles won their first Super Bowl, defeating the New England Patriots in February 2018, Shamus Joseph Clancy posted on Twitter what was intended to be a throwaway joke. He had no reason to think it would introduce him to his future wife.
He posted the famous photo of a Navy sailor kissing a nurse in Times Square, suggesting he was feeling a joy similar to Americans when they claimed victory in World War II. Ashley Nicole Suder, who didn’t follow Mr. Clancy but saw his tweet shared in her feed, sensed an opportunity and made a bold suggestion.
“If you’re looking for a girl to recreate this during the parade I’m here for it,” she wrote in response.
He agreed it would make for a good photo and tweet. So four days later, after the Eagles marched down Philadelphia’s Broad Street in an exuberant celebration, fulfilling a longtime dream for the city, the football-loving duo found each other on the parade route. Within about 30 seconds of meeting, Mr. Clancy dipped Ms. Suder, lifted her left leg for a bit of flair, and planted a deep kiss on her as his friend, Vincenzo Siciliano, took the photo.
“He just grabbed me, and took me, and dipped me, and I was like, well, OK, hello, this is OK,” Ms. Suder said.
Though the kiss went well, they immediately parted ways — the whole interaction lasted about a minute, barely a word spoken otherwise — and they waited to see if Mr. Clancy’s tweet with the photo would go similarly viral. It did.
Thousands of retweets later, Mr. Clancy and Ms. Suder were suddenly media darlings, symbols of a jubilant city. Local journalists clamored to interview them, and they agreed to meet a CBS reporter at the corner of Broad and Federal streets, the spot of their kiss.
After the interview, they thought maybe they should actually get to know each other. They’ve barely been apart since.
“I thought it was going to be a one-off Eagles celebration,” Mr. Clancy said. “There wasn’t any intention that we were going to fall in love.”
On April 12 — two months after the Eagles won their second Super Bowl — they were married in a self-uniting ceremony at La Chinesca, a Chinese-Mexican fusion restaurant in Philadelphia. Patrick O’Leary, one of Mr. Clancy’s closest friends, presided over the event before 115 guests.
In her vows, Ms. Suder nodded to their unusual meeting. “You quite literally swept me off my left foot, dipped me and kissed me so deeply that I almost couldn’t believe we were complete strangers before that moment,” she said.
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The dance floor came the most alive late in the night as the D.J. played “Mr. Brightside” by the Killers, Mr. Clancy’s favorite song and one that includes the line: “It started out with a kiss, how did it end up like this?”
Good question.
When they met, Ms. Suder, who grew up in Bensalem, Pa., was working as a licensing coordinator at a party favor company after graduating from St. Joseph’s University with a bachelor’s in food marketing. Now 32, she is a product development manager at Frankford Candy in Philadelphia.
Mr. Clancy, now 30 and a sportswriter at the news website PhillyVoice, was living at home in South Philadelphia, just entering the job market after graduating from the University of Pennsylvania with a bachelor’s degree in English.
Both grew up as obsessive Philadelphia sports fans. Ms. Suder’s parents filled their house with Eagles-themed knickknacks and decorations. By 2017, Mr. Clancy had developed a considerable Twitter following among Eagles fans for his jokes and passion.
Up to that point, the Eagles had rewarded their loyalty with consistent letdowns. But the 2017-2018 team that finally ended the city’s championship drought followed a Hollywood script, led to the Super Bowl win by an unheralded backup quarterback, Nick Foles. A wave of positivity and community washed over the city, a nearly universal expression of joy the city had never seen before.
In that context, it’s less surprising that Ms. Suder was feeling bold when she saw Mr. Clancy’s tweet. She suggested the photo because it would be funny, not because she was enchanted by his Twitter presence. And Mr. Clancy was not fishing for a woman to kiss with his tweet, but who was he to turn down a good offer?
They did not stick around after the kiss, but were reunited the next day when Ms. Suder gave Mr. Clancy a ride to their TV interview. The conversation in the car, they recall, was awkward. The one thing they agreed upon was that if a reporter tried to cajole them into recreating their kiss, they would refuse. (The reporter did try, and they did refuse.)
After the interview, they agreed on another thing: They needed a drink. So in what they now consider their first date, they went nearby to The Pub on Passyunk East, their chemistry growing as they chatted for the rest of the day and into the night. They started spending most of their time with each other, and moved in together six months later.
They shared a love of Marvel movies, both taking the day off work on the first day of “Avengers: Endgame,” and they liked going to the same concerts, especially in pop punk, emo and classic rock.
They even watched Eagles games with the same frantic energy, yelling at the TV and doing everything they could to turn the tides of luck in their favor. If the team was playing badly, they would watch from different parts of the living room or change into different Eagles gear, sometimes several times per game.
“Monday is a big laundry day for us,” Ms. Suder said.
In January 2022, after attending a Philadelphia 76ers basketball game, they had plans to meet up with friends at Pub on Passyunk East, where they had their first date and which remained a sentimental favorite. When they got off the subway, Ms. Suder noted that it was the spot where they met and suggested a kiss, as they often do when they return to the spot.
After kissing on the street corner, she started to walk away. “Ash,” he said, asking her to turn around. When she looked back, she saw him on one knee.
“I don’t think I even looked at the ring,” Ms. Suder said. “I was just looking at him.”
If not for another Eagles letdown, they could have had a similarly storybook wedding tale. When Philadelphia lost to the Kansas City Chiefs in the Super Bowl in 2023, it ruined their plans in several ways: Had Philadelphia won, they planned to get married in a surprise ceremony on Broad Street at the ensuing parade.
Instead, they pushed the wedding back, and were given the poetic result of getting married the same year the Eagles won their second Super Bowl. (They bristle at saying their story has come full circle, as a closed circle suggests the Eagles are done winning championships, a disgusting thought to them.)
Though they love the crowd-pleasing story of how they met, they did not want it to be the focus of their wedding day. Instead they chose to showcase their time together and how much they shared beyond their beloved sports teams.
“I think it would be weird not to incorporate it to some degree, but to make it the whole or the main focus of our relationship doesn’t feel like us anymore,” Mr. Clancy said. “Our relationship has grown beyond it.”
On This Day
When April 12, 2025
Where La Chinesca, Philadelphia
The Dress Ms. Suder wore a white Anthropologie dress with a veil custom-made by Madison Chamberlain, a Philadelphia-area designer. When the dance floor beckoned, she changed her footwear to custom Converse sneakers with their wedding date written on the back.
Brief Remarks The couple kept their vows short, eager to move on to the celebration with their guests. “I don’t just love you, I really, really like you,” Ms. Suder said in her remarks.
A Hidden Philadelphia Ode Their first dance was to “First Day of My Life” by Bright Eyes. About two-thirds of the way through, the D.J. flipped to the up-tempo “Fell In Love With a Girl” by the White Stripes — a nod to a dance scene in “Silver Linings Playbook,” a Philadelphia-set movie featuring rabid Eagles fans.
Daniel Victor is a senior editor at The Times on the Live team, which covers breaking and developing news.
The post They Kissed When the Eagles Won. Then They Got to Know Each Other. appeared first on New York Times.
