When Breana Michelle Teubner matched in June 2024 with Peter Neill McGuiness on Bumble, he suggested they meet at Original Joe’s, an Italian American restaurant in the North Beach area of San Francisco, where he had celebrated his 30th birthday 10 years before.
The next month, after she had returned from a trip, they sat by the restaurant’s fireplace talking nonstop. Ms. Teubner asked Mr. McGuiness to name his favorite autobiography. When he answered “The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin,” she thought his answer spoke volumes.
“Peter said one of Franklin’s guiding principles was to ask in the morning how you might contribute to the good of the day, and at night reflect on how you did,” said Ms. Teubner, 45, the chief operating officer of TYB, a community rewards platform based in San Francisco.
Mr. McGuiness was impressed with Ms. Teubner’s love of reading and her interest in sports. “I played baseball in college, and she had played softball growing up, so we also had that in common,” Mr. McGuiness, 40, a deputy district attorney in Alameda County focusing on homicides. “I kissed her at the end of the evening.”
Their second date was the following week at Hazie’s, a restaurant in San Francisco’s Hayes Valley neighborhood. They discussed some of his legal cases with Ms. Teubner acting like a defense lawyer to challenge him before his days in court. “I was so relaxed with Peter because he had character and was consistent in doing everything he said he would in setting up our dates,” Ms. Teubner said.
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By the third date — dinner followed by the movie “Barbie” — Mr. McGuiness said he knew Ms. Teubner was the one. “After she arrived at the restaurant, I saw how excited she was looking around the room for me,” he said. “I thought, ‘This is the woman I want to spend my life with.’”
Before they met, each had devoted years to their careers and communities.
Ms. Teubner, who was born in Denver and raised in San Juan Capistrano, Calif., earned a bachelor’s degree in American literature from the University of California, Los Angeles, and an M.B.A. from the University of Southern California. She is a board member of Watch Duty, an app that provides real-time information about wildfires, has invested in venture capital funds, and worked in Washington as a legislative assistant to Jeff Flake, a former Republican U.S. senator and representative from Arizona. For fun, she had once hiked Mount Kilimanjaro.
Mr. McGuiness was born in Oakland, Calif., and grew up in Alameda. He has a bachelor’s degree in accounting from Fordham University in New York. He also earned a law degree and an M.B.A. from the University of California, Davis. He serves on the board of the Alameda Boys & Girls Club.
Throughout her previous dating life, Ms. Teubner said, she had found it frustrating that most men were intimidated by her. “I often felt that I had to shrink myself to make a relationship work,” she said. “With Peter, my sense of purpose is what he loves the most about me. I found a true partner.”
As their relationship progressed, they faced logistical challenges and difficulties navigating as two independent people with opposite personalities. He lived in Alameda; she in San Francisco, a 25-minute drive away. He is introverted; she is extroverted. “I move fast, and have a try-new-things-and-learn mentality, while Peter takes a more methodical approach.”
They decided to buy a home together. “Breana is into architecture and design, while I come from a spartan home and had been living in a man cave with sports memorabilia,” Mr. McGuiness said. “I left most of the design decisions to her.”
On July 12, exactly a year after their first date, Ms. Teubner and Mr. McGuiness were lying on the floor of the future bedroom in the home they had just purchased in the Pacific Heights area of San Francisco. They talked about the memories they would make once the design was completed. Midway through the chat, he asked her to help him stand up.
He got down on one knee and proposed with his grandmother’s ring. She said yes.
They were married Jan. 17 on the back lawn of the Madrona, a 19th-century hillside mansion in Healdsburg, Calif. The groom’s mother, Yolanda Northridge, a retired Alameda County Superior Court judge, officiated before 140 guests.
Afterward, a candlelit dinner was served in the mansion’s drawing room, dining room and on the terrace. Toward the end of the evening, which was filled with toasts from community leaders, laughter, and dancing, guests were entertained with a cigar roller and whiskey tasting station on the deck.
“Since I was a little girl, I prayed for a purpose-driven marriage,” Ms. Teubner said. “Peter sees the worst in humanity with his career, but wakes up each day with optimism. I want him on my team.”
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