At a friend’s birthday party in October 2022, Sarah Ashley Gall found herself drawn to Holden Scott Rosen Grupp, whom she had met once before in the Hamptons.
“He had good banter,” she said.
Unfortunately, she discovered that Mr. Rosen Grupp also had a girlfriend.
“I had a little liquid courage, so I told him, ‘I think you’re really cute. If you’re ever single, call me,’” Ms. Gall said. “My friends and I laughed about this forever. For a long time, he was that guy that I’d said the crazy thing to.”
Mr. Rosen Grupp took the compliment and moved on, and the two didn’t interact again for months.
Ms. Gall, 30, is a psychiatric nurse at Gracie Square Hospital on Manhattan’s Upper East Side and a student at N.Y.U., where she’s working toward a master’s degree in psychiatric-mental health nursing. She grew up in Los Angeles and has a bachelor’s degree in communications from the University of Colorado Boulder, and a bachelor’s in nursing from N.Y.U.
Mr. Rosen Grupp, 29, was born in New York City and raised in Upper Saddle River, N.J. He graduated from Tufts University with a degree in international relations and is an entrepreneur and real estate investor in New York.
On a Saturday night in late August 2023, a newly single Mr. Rosen Grupp sent Ms. Gall a direct message on Instagram. Feeling giddy and excited, Ms. Gall abandoned an after-party for the band the Strokes, where she had been with a date, and met Mr. Rosen Grupp at Horses and Divorces, a bar in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. They spent a few hours talking, but “nothing happened,” Ms. Gall said.
They began meeting for afternoon walks and lunches, and getting to know each other.
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“He comes off sassy, a little blunt, but when I started hanging out with him, I realized he sings Broadway tunes in his room,” Ms. Gall said.
Though there were romantic feelings between them, Mr. Rosen Grupp wasn’t sure if he was ready to begin another long-term relationship after his breakup. On Thanksgiving, when Ms. Gall went to Los Angeles to visit her family, Mr. Rosen Grupp realized how much he missed her.
“I was excited when she would FaceTime and call me,” he said. “I couldn’t wait until she came home, and the second she did, I went over with pizza.”
He confessed his feelings on New Year’s Eve, during a party at the ELM Foundation in Brooklyn, which was intended to raise money for the nonprofit International Sports and Music Project, which funds sports and music initiatives in schools and shelters.
“I don’t know if she saw it coming, but it just came out of me,” Mr. Rosen Grupp said.
In May 2024, Mr. Rosen Grupp moved into Ms. Gall’s cramped studio apartment in Williamsburg. They intended to stay a couple of months, but ended up living there for more than a year. The experience tested them, they said, but also confirmed that they were ready for the next step. Around the same time, Ms. Gall began the process of converting to Judaism.
Ms. Gall said the process confirmed what she already felt inside. “My stepmom is Jewish,” she said. “I went to Jewish schools my whole life, and I went on Birthright Israel when I graduated from college.”
On July 2, 2025, while visiting Ms. Gall’s family in Laguna Beach, Calif., Mr. Rosen Grupp, Ms. Gall, Ms. Gall’s brother and her parents all popped into the studio of an artist friend named Steve Adam. Mr. Adam asked Ms. Gall to look at some of his paintings.
“I see this huge painting, and at the bottom, it says, ‘Sarah, will you marry me?’ I think, is this another Sarah?” Ms. Gall said. “I looked behind me, and I said, ‘Are you serious right now?’”
Mr. Rosen Grupp descended to one knee and asked Ms. Gall to marry him. After she said yes, they went to Romeo Cucina, a local Italian restaurant, where around 70 friends and family members were waiting for a surprise engagement party.
Ms. Gall and Mr. Rosen Grupp were married Jan. 10 at 99 Scott, an event space in Brooklyn, by Rabbi Arielle Stein of Congregation Rodeph Sholom on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. (Ms. Gall went through the conversion process at Congregation Rodeph Sholom.)
For a unified feel, they arranged their 225 guests in a circle around them. “A lot of things we did were in the hope of joining the two sides,” Ms. Gall said.
To that end, the night before the wedding, they signed their marriage license and the ketubah, a Jewish marriage contract, during a rehearsal dinner at Radegast Hall & Biergarten in Brooklyn, as 130 of their guests cheered them on.
The celebratory mood lasted all weekend.
“There was so much energy and love,” Mr. Rosen Grupp said. During the reception, he said, “We couldn’t get off the dance floor. Everybody’s shirts were drenched.”
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