It’s a testament to the horrors of the modern dating scene that Andie Cox agreed to be set up with a man who lived nearly 2,000 miles away in April 2024. “Dating in your 30s in L.A., I’m here to confirm it does suck,” said Ms. Cox, the vice president of communications for the Recording Academy and Grammy Awards.
“Swiping is a young woman’s game,” she said. “I went the complete opposite direction, and told all my friends, ‘Please set me up if you think there’s any chance that this is a good guy.’”
Ms. Cox, 41, was raised in rural Greenville, Ohio. She received a bachelor’s degree in public relations from Ball State University in Indiana, and lived in Indianapolis and Chicago before settling in Los Angeles.
Her college roommate passed along Ms. Cox’s number to her partner’s boss, Ryan Gibson, 41, the chief operating officer of Thomas Construction, who was living in Lake of the Ozarks, Mo. He was born and raised in Springfield, Mo., and earned a bachelor’s degree in construction management from Missouri State University.
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Mr. Gibson was intrigued when the mutual friends shared photos of Ms. Cox. “Of course, my first reaction was, ‘She’s beautiful! Why is she single?’” he said. “Come to find out, there is a catch: She lives in L.A.”
With basement-level expectations, the pair began exchanging text messages on April 11. Ms. Cox can pinpoint the moment when she first surmised that Mr. Gibson, who has a 17-year-old son and 15-year-old daughter from his first marriage, was a good guy: He mentioned assembling a “makeup desk” for his daughter one day. “‘You mean a vanity?’” Ms. Cox asked. “And he said, ‘Well, no, like a makeup desk.’ I thought it was the most endearing dad thing you could say.”
Mr. Gibson remembered the incident because “I think we texted for about 12 hours straight that day.”
Within days, they set a first date in Nashville, where Ms. Cox was planning to celebrate her 40th birthday with family and friends. When he spotted her smile at the Union Station hotel on Friday, April 19, Mr. Gibson felt a click. “This is real, and this is happening,” he said. “I think I blacked out for the first 30 minutes.”
Ms. Cox was anxious, too. “I was so nervous because I could feel that this really could be something, in my gut,” Ms. Cox said.
The date was such a success that Ms. Cox invited Mr. Gibson to a gathering at her Airbnb later that night. “It’s absolutely the dumbest idea of all time that happened to work out,” she said.
Mr. Gibson met her immediate family and best friends and wound up chatting for an hour with Ms. Cox’s father about the motorcycle racing series Supercross. An invitation to the birthday party the next day naturally followed. “By the end of the party, Ryan had met 25 of the most important people in my life, only 24 hours after meeting me,” Ms. Cox said.
They saw each other the next few days, canceling all previous plans to extend time in their “love bubble.” Before they were forced to part because of work obligations, they set their next meeting in St. Louis — and had already exchanged “I love yous.”
From that week on, they never went more than 10 days without seeing each other. The theme song of the era, Ms. Cox said, was George Harrison’s 1987 cover of “Got My Mind Set on You.” She then recited the lyrics: “It’s going to take time, a whole lot of precious time. It’s going to take money, a whole lot of spending money.”
Logging the airline miles was worth it, both say, because conversations around their long-term potential came up quickly. After just over four months together, on Sept. 1, 2024, Mr. Gibson proposed during a winery tour in California’s Santa Ynez Valley. In February 2025, they each moved to the city that made the most sense for both their careers: Nashville, where they had first met.
And it was in Nashville that the couple married on June 21, in front of 160 guests at Clementine Hall, a restored 19th-century event space. Peter Sloterdyk, Ms. Cox’s friend who was previously ordained by the Universal Life Church, officiated. Mr. Sloterdyk had been one of the friends to “grill him” at that birthday weekend, Mr. Gibson said.
As one might expect for a wedding in Music City, the celebration’s tunes were carefully selected. A string quartet played covers of pop hits before the couple entered the ceremony space, and guests sang aloud to the Queen lyrics: “Can anybody find me somebody to love?”
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