When Casey Irene DelBasso and Christopher George Kelley met on the first day of classes at Fairfield University in September 2011, they were both film and television majors settling into school.
After an introductory course for students in the film and television program, they realized they were headed to the same class and walked across campus together. They talked about their families, upbringings and shared love for Criterion films.
Mr. Kelley said he was caught off guard by how quickly he fell for her. “I wasn’t looking for a relationship at all,” he said. “But learning her values so early on, I thought, oh no, I’m really into her.”
Later that afternoon, Ms. DelBasso sent her mother a text message: “I think I met my husband.”
For nearly three years, they remained platonic friends. But their dynamic changed in June 2013, when they joined a student film project in York, Maine, along with 20 classmates and the Rev. Jim Mayzik, a Jesuit priest who was the head of the program. (Fairfield University, in Fairfield, Conn., is a Jesuit school.)
On set, they found excuses to work together, volunteering for errands and late-night tasks. “That summer is when we finally admitted what we’d both known for a long time,” Ms. DelBasso said. They became a couple.
Ms. DelBasso, 33, who grew up in Orange, Conn., is a digital reporter at “Good Morning America” for ABC News, based in New York. Mr. Kelley, 32, raised in Schoharie, N.Y., is a film editor at the Cabin Editing Company, based in New York. They both graduated with bachelor’s degrees in film and television.
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After graduating, they moved to New York in 2015 to kick-start their media careers, but lived separately — he in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, and she on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. “There was inevitably uncertainty as we were figuring out our careers and lives, but there was never a moment when being together felt uncertain,” Mr. Kelley said. In September 2019, they moved into an apartment on the Upper East Side together.
Ms. DelBasso was raised by her mother and grandparents and had envisioned marriage before living together, reflecting the values she grew up with. Mr. Kelley, however, felt strongly about sharing a home first. They agreed to move forward with both perspectives in mind, planning to revisit engagement after settling in.
Within months, the Covid-19 pandemic upended that plan. With both working remotely, the apartment felt increasingly confining, and in July 2020, they moved to Astoria, Queens, for more space. By September, the strain of the pandemic — isolation, disconnection and watching relationships around them change — brought new concerns to the surface. Ms. DelBasso told Mr. Kelley she wasn’t ready to move toward an engagement. “‘We’re growing apart,’” she said.
Mr. Kelley said the conversation was painful but necessary. “It was really hard to hear, but losing her wasn’t worth not doing the work.”
They became more deliberate after that conversation, taking nightly walks, eating dinner without distractions, and addressing long-avoided issues. “Doing those things really changed it for the better,” Ms. DelBasso said. They still live in Astoria with their terrier mix, Cannoli.
On Oct. 8, 2024, Mr. Kelley proposed with a vintage diamond ring outside Grand Central Terminal, a place with sentimental value because it was where they would commute from Fairfield together. And the date held particular meaning for Ms. DelBasso: Her grandfather, Vincent Rispoli, died on Jan. 8, 2008, and since then, the number 108 has become a recurring symbol in her life. “I believe he sends me reminders through 108,” she said.
On Jan. 8, 2026, Ms. DelBasso and Mr. Kelley were legally married by Caleb Trainor, a senior clerk at Newport City Hall in Rhode Island, with six family members present. The couple often visited Newport with friends during the summer.
After the ceremony, the group celebrated at La Vecina Taqueria in downtown Newport over tacos and margaritas.
Two days later, on Jan. 10, they held a Catholic ceremony at St. Joseph’s Church in Newport before 106 guests. The Rev. Mayzik from their film program officiated. “He watched us grow up as students, as storytellers and eventually as two people falling in love,” Ms. DelBasso said.
The reception was held at the Vanderbilt in Newport. Throughout the evening, Ms. DelBasso told Mr. Kelley she wished her grandparents were there to see it all. He surprised her by playing her grandparents’ wedding song, “The Nearness of You,” by Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong.
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