In the summer of 2023, Daniella Roldan had just graduated from law school at the University of Miami, started a new job at the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office, and was looking for ways to meet new people. A law school friend invited her to a beach volleyball group that met on Wednesday evenings on the public courts of South Beach in Miami Beach.
It was there that she met Michael Oren Wexler, who stood out for his competitiveness — and his humor. “He was very sarcastic,” Ms. Roldan, who goes by Dani, said. “And I was the only one laughing.”
Mr. Wexler noticed. “A lot of people don’t really get my humor,” he said. “She did right away.”
On Sept. 24, 2023, they went on their first date for coffee at Cortadito Coffee House in Coral Gables. Coordinating the date had taken some time. Ms. Roldan was working at the State Attorney’s office while studying for the Florida bar exam, and Mr. Wexler was frequently traveling for his job. A Sunday afternoon was the only time that worked, and over coffee, they talked for hours.
Around 5 p.m., he glanced at his watch and mentioned that Yom Kippur was beginning at sundown. Ms. Roldan, who had many Jewish friends from when she grew up in Bogotá, Colombia, understood what that meant — and what it might mean for them.
“I told him, ‘I don’t just date to date,’” she said. “‘If we’re going to do this, I want to do this seriously.’” Ms. Roldan, who is Catholic, added one more thing: She told him she was not going to convert. “I wasn’t going to waste his time or mine,” she said. “That’s OK, we’ll figure it out,” Mr. Wexler said.
“It went from ‘he’s really cool’ to ‘I see a life with him,’” she said.
Ms. Roldan, 28, was born in Boca Raton, Fla., and raised in Bogotá, Colombia. She is a former professional tennis player who competed internationally and trained with the United States Tennis Association. She is a lawyer at Siegfried Rivera, a law firm based in Coral Gables. She has a bachelor’s degree in political science and a law degree, both from the University of Miami.
Mr. Wexler, 36, is from Rye, N.Y. He is a vice president at Pacific Investment Management Company, a global investment management firm headquartered in Newport Beach, Calif. He holds a bachelor’s degree in history from the University of Rochester in New York and an M.B.A. from Columbia Business School.
They became exclusive in October 2023, and a few weeks later, he invited her to spend Thanksgiving with his family in New York. Ms. Roldan, who was far from her family, was touched. “I would see my family every single day if I could,” she said. “Having his family close was very important to me.”
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She spent most of 2024 studying for the Florida bar exam while working full time — it was her second attempt, after not passing on her first try. In March 2025, she moved into Mr. Wexler’s apartment in the Brickell neighborhood of Miami, where they currently reside. The following month, while his parents were visiting, she found out she had passed the exam. “When Dani started crying, my parents did too,” Mr. Wexler said. “It was a really special moment. We were so proud of her.”
On March 15, 2025, Mr. Wexler proposed to Ms. Roldan with a round diamond ring near the waterfront in Brickell around sunset. Afterward, the couple celebrated over dinner at Osaka, a Japanese-Peruvian fusion restaurant in Brickell.
Almost a year later, on March 17, they were married at the Coral Gables District Court by Hemal Parekh, a court clerk, in a bilingual ceremony in English and Spanish attended by her parents and grandparents. Afterward, they celebrated with a lunch of seafood and champagne at Mika, a Coastal Riviera restaurant in Coral Gables, before Ms. Roldan had to return to work.
Four days later, they held a wedding celebration and reception at the Edition hotel in Miami Beach, before 230 guests, with Mr. Wexler’s uncle, Elias Wexler, leading the ceremony.
After their first dance to “Stargazing” by Myles Smith, guests filled the dance floor for a Jewish hora, followed by a Colombian-style hora loca, where guests wore sombrero hats. “We didn’t want anybody on either side to feel like their culture was overshadowed,” Mr. Wexler said. “I saw my parents dancing to Latin music for the first time — and a lot of people on Dani’s side had never done a hora before.”
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