In May 2021, Joel Kim Booster and John Michael Sudsina both went on their first adventures after getting the Covid-19 vaccine. Neither was expecting to fall in love with the first new single man they met.
They were on a trip to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, with their respective friend groups. Mr. Kim Booster was living in Los Angeles, and Mr. Sudsina was living in San Francisco, but planned to move to Los Angeles that August.
“I was like, ‘I’m moving to L.A., vaccine summer, we’re back,’” Mr. Sudsina said. They both were excited about being single and meeting new people coming out of lockdown.
Their two friend groups met up at a club called Industry, and Mr. Sudsina and Mr. Kim Booster were introduced to each other by mutual friends. For an hour, they talked in the club.
“We were pretty much scream-whispering stories into each other’s ears at the very loud nightclub, just telling every anecdote from our lives,” Mr. Kim Booster said. “Which now, in hindsight, is very us.” But they were also probably more inclined to talk so much at the club because the music was “bad,” they said in unison.
“It was like pots and pans, ‘Rainbow Road’ techno music from Mario Kart,” Mr. Kim Booster said. “Third lap, a little too fast,” added Mr. Sudsina, who is taking Mr. Kim Booster’s last name.
Mr. Kim Booster, 37, is an actor, writer and comedian who stars alongside Maya Rudolph in the Apple TV+ series “Loot,” and wrote and starred in “Fire Island,” a romantic comedy inspired by “Pride and Prejudice.”
Mr. Sudsina, 32, who also goes by JM, is a video game producer working at Riot Games as a principal creative producer.
The two connected over their love of musicals and “in the midst of all these shirtless, hot gay men dancing around us, we were chatting about what roles we played in high school,” Mr. Kim Booster said. He bragged about playing Seymour in “Little Shop of Horrors” in his hometown, Plainfield, Ill. Mr. Sudsina, who grew up in Aurora, Ohio, talked about being in “Rent,” “The Drowsy Chaperone” and “Chicago.”
They then had an awkward moment as Mr. Sudsina was walking out of the restroom, and Mr. Kim Booster was walking in. “I assumed he was coming in for a kiss, and he assumed I was going in for a kiss,” Mr. Kim Booster said. “And we ended up kissing.” They then went to the beach and talked until the sun rose.
Thus ensued their long weekend as “vacation boyfriends,” Mr. Kim Booster said. One day during the trip, they were at a cabana at a beach club with the curtains closed. “We were just lying there looking at each other’s eyes — it’s so corny now — but just talking for like 45 minutes,” Mr. Sudsina said. They called the moment “the cabana pocket dimension.”
But they were at two different places in their dating lives. Mr. Sudsina wanted to be single for a year as he was preparing for his move to Los Angeles and finding his footing there. Mr. Kim Booster was ready for a life partner, he said: “I was 33 at the time. I never had a boyfriend. My dad had passed during Covid, and that sort of shook something, loosened me a little bit.” They decided not to rush into anything and go with the flow.
Binge more Vows columns here and read all our wedding, relationship and divorce coverage here.
When they returned home from the trip, they watched television shows together on FaceTime, including the animated series “Steven Universe.” Mr. Sudsina, who loves animation, put together a list of episodes for Mr. Kim Booster to watch and the ones he could skip.
“It was like boyfriend homework,” Mr. Kim Booster said.
And he recommended Mr. Sudsina watch the Netflix sketch comedy series “I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson.” They were bringing each other into their worlds.
Two weeks after meeting, Mr. Kim Booster told Mr. Sudsina that he would be going to San Francisco for the Pride parade at the end of June. Mr. Kim Booster was also speaking on various podcasts, including his own advice show, “Urgent Care with Joel Kim Booster + Mitra Jouhari,” about Mr. Sudsina.
“He knows I don’t really use social media that much, so I think he felt a little overconfident that I wouldn’t see,” Mr. Sudsina said. On one podcast episode, he recalled hearing Mr. Kim Booster say, “So I’m in love with this guy. I met him two weeks ago. I’m going up to visit him at SF Pride. Ostensibly, I’m going there to see my friends. But that’s a lie.”
(Though Mr. Sudsina paraphrased the quote, the one word he remembers was “ostensibly.” “I think I won some major points for using a big vocab word,” Mr. Kim Booster said.)
And then Mr. Sudsina pretended like he didn’t hear any of it. “I didn’t want to embarrass him,” he said.
Mr. Kim Booster continued to talk about him on podcasts for the first few months of their courtship. “Meanwhile, all his rat friends are bottling back all this information to him,” Mr. Kim Booster said. “I was an idiot.”
In San Francisco, they danced together all weekend, and on the Monday after the Pride parade, Mr. Sudsina took him to two of his favorite neighborhood spots for their first official date: Burma Love, a restaurant, and Martuni’s, a piano bar where they sang a song for each other.
After a romantic long weekend, Mr. Kim Booster flew to New York to start preproduction on “Fire Island.” In August 2021, Mr. Sudsina visited and saw him perform for the first time at a live show called “I Don’t Think So, Honey!,” hosted by the comedians Bowen Yang and Matt Rogers — good friends of Mr. Kim Booster, “who have big personalities.”
“I could drop him in the middle of this crazy world, this cast of characters that are all vying for attention and being bombastic, and he could hold his own,” Mr. Kim Booster said. At one point, he recalled, Mr. Rogers pulled Mr. Sudsina aside and said, “‘I was here before you, and I’ll be here after you, too. So be nice to my friend.’”
In mid-September, Mr. Kim Booster returned to Los Angeles, and Mr. Sudsina had settled into his new apartment in West Hollywood. They saw each other often but were still cautious about entering a relationship too fast.
The watershed moment for Mr. Sudsina was in October, when he saw the director’s cut of “Fire Island.”
Mr. Sudsina graduated from the University of Southern California with a bachelor’s degree in interactive media and games, but he also minored in cinema. “I’m a harsh critic and a bad liar,” he said. “I did want to make sure I liked his art.” Mr. Kim Booster graduated from Millikin University in Decatur, Ill., with a bachelor’s degree in theater.
As Mr. Sudsina was watching the director’s cut, he thought it was smart, clever and funny. But the real kicker was at the end of the movie, which Mr. Kim Booster rewrote after being inspired by their conversations in Puerto Vallarta, including one in the “cabana pocket dimension” when Mr. Sudsina had told him, “You’re so kind, and you’re so interesting.”
At this point, tears were streaming down his face. “Am I a muse?” Mr. Sudsina recalled thinking. By the next week, they were referring to each other as “boyfriend.”
In Los Angeles, they spent a lot of time consuming and dissecting movies and television shows. In April 2022, Mr. Kim Booster moved into a home in Lake Hollywood. The following year, Mr. Sudsina officially moved in — after many difficult conversations about navigating their lives as a couple.
Right before the Covid-19 pandemic, Mr. Kim Booster was diagnosed with type 2 bipolar disorder. “There was a lot of trial and error,” Mr. Kim Booster said, “both with me trying to figure out how to best take care of myself and for him to figure out how to best be there for me.” And they also dealt with Mr. Kim Booster’s growing fame together.
Mr. Sudsina has been a grounding presence in his life. “You get to a certain point in Hollywood, I think, when you will finally arrive at something like the Emmys, and you’re supposed to think you’re too cool to be there or that it’s normal,” Mr. Kim Booster said. “I remember at the Emmys when I went, he was like, ‘Hey, you’ve wanted this your entire life. This is really actually very cool. Padma Lakshmi is standing right over there, we watch her on TV.’”
In September 2024, on a trip together to Jeju Island, South Korea, where Mr. Kim Booster was born and adopted from, he proposed. “It was sort of a comedy of errors,” he said. They were promised a private boat, but instead they shared it with a “bunch of old Korean men fishing,” Mr. Kim Booster said. He accidentally opened the ring case upside down, and the ring almost fell into the ocean. And at the end, the tour guide asked everyone on the boat to clap, but nobody did.
“It was not at all how I had pictured it, but it was absolutely perfect,” Mr. Kim Booster said.
On Dec. 30, the couple were married at the Exploratorium, an interactive science museum in San Francisco, before 167 guests. The ceremony was officiated by the Rev. Sarah Casey, Mr. Kim Booster’s childhood best friend and an ordained Methodist minister of Tibbetts United Methodist Church in Seattle.
“We both have a very big sense of play, and that is sort of the ethos of the Exploratorium,” Mr. Kim Booster said.
Mr. Kim Booster, dressed in an ivory Bode suit, and Mr. Sudsina, in a black Peter Do suit, walked into the ceremony to “Nothing Can Change This Love” by Sam Cooke, and they exited to “For Once In My Life” by Stevie Wonder.
One of their priorities for the wedding was to make sure that the ceremony was under 25 minutes long because they wanted to get to the party fast — they both love parties and wanted to throw a really good one for their wedding.
Alexis Tucci, the D.J., kicked off a night of dancing with a mix of disco and house music with an open bar sponsored by Don Julio. Emotional speeches were also delivered by their wedding party members: Mitra Jouhari, Ahmed Zaeem, Phil Tassen and Mr. Rogers and Mr. Yang as a pair.
“I feel when I’m with Joel, I’m in a rom-com,” Mr. Sudsina said. “It’s always an adventure. And I love that we both have already worked through so much and continue to meet new versions of each other and continue to grow together. I think he’s going to be an amazing father, an amazing partner, an amazing friend.”
On This Day
When Dec. 30, 2025
Where The Exploratorium, San Francisco
Ring Warming Ceremony Before they exchanged rings, their families and members of the wedding party passed the couple’s rings around, imbuing them with positive energy. “Initially, we were going to pass it through every person that was at the wedding, but that would have taken forever,” Mr. Kim Booster said. (It certainly would have made the ceremony longer than 25 minutes.)
New Year’s Eve The day after their wedding, the couple attended a party hosted by a “dear friend” for their wedding guests. On New Year’s Day, they attended Breakfast of Champions, an annual block party in San Francisco.
Sadiba Hasan reports on love and culture for the Styles section of The Times.
The post One Was Ready for a Life Partner. The Other, a ‘Vaccine Summer.’ appeared first on New York Times.
