Finding success as a YouTuber can be a dream come true. But it doesn’t always lead to a satisfying love life — or so it seemed to Remi Ashten Cruz after building a devoted audience for her takes on everything from dorm décor to snack food.
Miss Remi Ashten, the YouTube channel Ms. Cruz, 30, started in 2012, had spawned spinoff channels and podcasts that have won her five million followers across platforms. But finding men whose relationship goals matched her own in Los Angeles while helming various series including “Pretty Basic,” the podcast she still hosts with her best friend, Alisha Marie McDonal, had been mostly a bust.
“A lot of guys were condescending about my career,” she said, because of its focus on what she called “girl topics,” like trends and relationships. By the time Cal Robert Parsons, 29, reached out on Hinge in June 2019, she was ready to call it quits on dating altogether.
“I had officially given up,” Ms. Cruz said.
She had told Ms. McDonal as much the day her phone pinged with a “Cal messaged you” notification. “We had just wrapped an episode, and I told her this guy Cal asked me out on a date,” she said. First, she responded to Mr. Parsons. “Yeah, sure!” she wrote. “Then I told my best friend, ‘I’m not going on that date.’”
Ms. Cruz is from Anaheim Hills, Calif. Her parents weren’t thrilled when, in 2013, she told them of her plan to take a year off from college at the University of California, Riverside, where she was studying psychology, to focus on YouTube. She never went back.
“I had so much drive,” she said. “I was posting every single day. I loved it. I still love it.”
Mr. Parsons, 29, knew nothing about her onscreen persona when he asked her out. But “I thought she was pretty,” he said. And Ms. Cruz’s answers to a “three things you love” question spoke to him.
“I also love dogs, Chance the Rapper and tacos,” Mr. Parsons said.
Mr. Parsons grew up in Pinehurst, N.C. In 2018, months after he earned a bachelor’s degree in computer science at Wake Forest University, he and a friend moved to Los Angeles to find jobs in film, the field Mr. Parsons had minored in.
He struggled to land gigs as a production assistant and camera operator, among other roles. On the side, he worked as a members’ assistant at a golf club.
Dating on apps had proved to be as much of a grind — until Ms. Cruz reversed course and accepted his invitation for a first date.
Ms. McDonal, she said, “had convinced me not to give up on love.”
On June 14, 2019, they met at Urth Caffé in downtown Los Angeles. Ms. Cruz instantly hated his shirt. “It had a black base and was covered in neon florals,” she said. “But he was so cute.”
Mr. Parsons had chosen the shirt, he said, to set a tone. “I wanted to feel, like, not reserved or anything,” he said. When Ms. Cruz gave it to Goodwill a few months later — “as soon as I felt comfortable enough,” she said — he didn’t object.
He was fine with her line of work, too, though she was initially coy about it. On the first date, “when I asked what she does she said, ‘Oh, marketing,’” he said. Ms. Cruz didn’t want to be judged. But Mr. Parsons was not the judging type.
Within a week, they were hanging out in her downtown Los Angeles apartment, sometimes while she was making content. Mr. Parsons lived nearby in Koreatown. “I only respected her for her career,” he said.
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When she invited him to be her date to the premiere of “Spider-Man: Far From Home” weeks later, he was halfway in love.
It wasn’t long before they were a couple.
The following year, with the arrival of the pandemic, Mr. Parsons moved into a house Ms. Cruz had recently bought in the San Fernando Valley. Their lives intertwined professionally last August, when Mr. Parsons became the videographer and content editor for Ms. Cruz’s vodcast (a podcast with video) “Basically Unfiltered.”
They were engaged by then. Mr. Parsons had proposed in Santa Barbara, Calif., in September 2023.
The couple married on June 14, their sixth anniversary, at Bella Vista Estate in Santa Barbara. A friend, Phil Kunka, who was ordained by the Universal Life Church for the occasion, officiated. After a short ceremony, their 140 guests, including her friend, the singer Lana Del Rey, joined them for a reception and later an after-party.
“I wanted to build our own Korean night market,” she said, including food trucks, live music and plenty of pop culture references. Among them: Labubus, the plush toys that have become a craze.
“I feel as though I slightly started that trend,” Ms. Cruz said.
At a claw machine, instead of trying to grip rubber ducks or other kitschy prizes, guests aimed at a bucket full of Labubus.
The post She Didn’t Give Up on Her YouTube Dream — or on Love appeared first on New York Times.
