The attraction was instant when Mark Van Wye and Helena Ruth Brown locked eyes at the Studio (MDR), a Pilates space in Los Angeles’s Playa Vista neighborhood, on Oct. 5, 2022. A regular for more than a decade, Mr. Van Wye had just finished a class as Dr. Brown arrived.
“I was in the lobby putting my shoes on when a whirlwind of a woman burst in,” he said. “Her hair seemed to be on fire, and her eyes were brighter than anything I had ever seen.”
“I was riveted by Mark and the way he was looking at me,” she said.
The encounter caught him off guard because he almost always went to the studio’s location in Marina del Rey, closer to his home. “On a whim that morning, I randomly signed up for a session in Playa Vista,” he said.
At the time, both were uninterested in love. Mr. Van Wye, now 57, was focused on growing his dog-training franchise, Zoom Room, and raising his then-12-year-old son. Dr. Brown, 43, was happily single and enjoyed spending time with her circle of friends. He lived in Santa Monica, Calif., while she rented in Venice Beach, about 15 minutes away.
Nothing came of their initial encounter until the following week, when Mr. Van Wye returned to the studio on the same Wednesday morning, in hopes of running into Dr. Brown again. “The plan worked, and this time, I wrote her a note with my number and asked her to invite me out,” he said.
They had their first date that weekend in Mr. Van Wye’s backyard, where they shared a meal of Afghan rice, accompanied by a bottle of Champagne. Over dinner, they planned the menus for their next two dates: Albanian cuisine and then Algerian. They were cooking the national dish of every country alphabetically and looking for reasons to keep spending time together.
By the end of the date, it was clear that they “had fallen completely in love,” they said.
After that first meal, they lingered in the backyard’s gazebo, where they kissed. “Our connection — intellectually, physically and in every way — was wild,” Mr. Van Wye said.
Their relationship went into high gear. They texted throughout the day and spoke on the phone for hours. Mr. Van Wye soon invited Dr. Brown over again, this time with her schnoodle, Charlie. “After a day, it became clear that Charlie loved Mark and wouldn’t leave,” Dr. Brown said. “I ended up staying over and never really went back to Venice.”
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Just three weeks after meeting, they took a skiing trip to Park City, Utah, and began planning other vacations. Dr. Brown had already booked a trip to Patagonia in Chile with friends that Christmas and officially moved into his house before she left. “The hardest part about the trip wasn’t the hiking — it was the absence,” she said. “I vowed I would never spend another holiday away from Mark.”
Mr. Van Wye, who is from Miami Beach, is the chief executive of Zoom Room, an indoor dog-training franchise with more than 60 locations nationwide. He is also the author of “Puppy Training in 7 Easy Steps.” He holds a bachelor’s degree in neuroscience and English from Amherst College and a master’s in playwriting from Smith College. He has a teenage son from a previous marriage.
Dr. Brown grew up in Hayward, Calif., and is a clinical psychologist with a private practice in Hermosa Beach, Calif. She earned a bachelor’s degree in international communications from the American University of Paris, as well as a master’s degree in clinical psychology from Mount St. Mary’s University in Los Angeles and a doctorate in psychology from the Chicago School.
Food was one of their greatest connections. Mr. Van Wye had baked bread at a bakery in Amherst. Dr. Brown had owned a café in the Bay Area in her early 20s and had helped notable chefs like Daniel Patterson and Jeremy Fox open restaurants.
Dr. Brown and Mr. Van Wye spent their time together frequenting restaurants, cooking elaborate meals and experimenting with cocktail making. The couple frequently hosted friends for dinners and went horseback riding at local ranches.
The two lived in Santa Monica until Feb. 14, 2024, when they moved into a home together in the Venice Canals, where they continue to live. At the time, they didn’t know Valentine’s Day would become their wedding day two years later.
They became engaged the following month during a two-week trip to Paris, and married on Feb. 14 before 44 guests in an outdoor chapel at Dunton Hot Springs, a resort in Dolores, Colo.
Ian Saunders, a friend of Mr. Van Wye’s, who was ordained by the Universal Life Church, officiated. “The Book of Love” by the Magnetic Fields played as they shared their first kiss as newlyweds.
At the reception after, in lieu of a traditional cake, guests were offered a croquembouche, a cone-shaped tower of profiteroles, and a cheese tower for dessert.
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