The day after they became an official couple, Wolfgang Michael Thomas Ruth and Juan Camilo Osorio Paternina got into a silly argument: Mr. Osorio, as he goes by, stated that he would need to marry a Colombian, like himself, who can speak Spanish because his parents speak very little English.
“I was like, ‘Why would you tell me that the day after we made it official?,’” Mr. Ruth said. It was December 2021.
Mr. Osorio, who grew up in Cartagena, Colombia, before moving to Gulf Shores, Ala., at 14, admits he had a tendency to self-sabotage. But when he confessed that he did not actually need to marry a Colombian, they made up. Still, Mr. Ruth, who is from Flint, Mich., decided to learn Spanish.
One day, in January 2024, Mr. Osorio posted a video on TikTok of Mr. Ruth practicing using a word he had just learned (la nieve). The video went viral and inspired them to continue posting.
Their TikTok handle, Flavio and Flavio, was inspired by one of their favorite videos on Vine, a short-form video app that shut down in 2017. The duo now has over 650,000 followers on TikTok, where they post videos of Mr. Ruth reciting words in Spanish, sometimes incorrectly, sometimes awkwardly, in his soft voice. (Mr. Ruth now texts Mr. Osorio’s mother in Spanish.)
Mr. Osorio and Mr. Ruth, both 28, met on Hinge in October 2021 and were immediately drawn to each other’s humor. They went on a date at Jeffrey’s Grocery, a seafood restaurant in the West Village. Afterward, they played chess at Mr. Osorio’s apartment nearby.
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The post They Never Expected Their Spanish Lessons to Go Viral appeared first on New York Times.
