The first time Olivia Kathleen MacKinnon met William Howard Keenan III, he was wearing a tutu, a tiara, tights and bloody socks at his sister’s Halloween party in 2019. The costume? Injured ballerina.
“I found it funny, slightly endearing and a little bit odd,” said Ms. MacKinnon, an actual ballerina at the New York City Ballet.
Because Ms. MacKinnon was in a relationship at the time, her brief interaction with Mr. Keenan remained just that until nearly four years later, when Mr. Keenan’s sister gave him the number of the newly single Ms. MacKinnon.
“My sister is really the Cupid of the whole story,” said Mr. Keenan, who goes by Bill.
In his first missive to Ms. MacKinnon, at the end of August 2023, Mr. Keenan referenced her profession, writing, “I’m standing in first position as I type.”
During their first date at Arte Cafe on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, where they both lived, Ms. MacKinnon discovered that beneath Mr. Keenan’s humorous text message was a true passion for the art form.
“We joke that he loves ‘The Nutcracker’ more than I do,” said Ms. MacKinnon, 30, who has performed all the lead roles in George Balanchine’s “The Nutcracker,” including Sugarplum last December. “He was genuinely interested in my lifestyle, the performances and all the details in between.”
Mr. Keenan, who played professional hockey in Europe for three years after graduating from college, even took ballet lessons for several years, from ages 7 to 11. At the time, his mother needed a way to occupy him while his sister, Mary Glenn Keenan Green, studied at the School of American Ballet at Lincoln Center. (Ms. Green is now a repertory director at the New York City Ballet).
“I have such a deep respect for the discipline and the pain and suffering it takes to perform,” Mr. Keenan said. “With hockey, nobody cares what you look like on the ice. With ballet, you have to go through all these ups and downs, and you have to do it as if it’s effortless. It’s hard not to be awe-struck.”
Ms. MacKinnon was born and raised in Mobile, Ala., and moved to New York City at 15 to study at the School of American Ballet. She joined the New York City Ballet in 2012 as an apprentice and became a soloist in 2023. In addition to being a dancer, she is on the faculty at the School of American Ballet.
Looking back, Ms. MacKinnon said, she was glad she and Mr. Keenan reconnected after her promotion.
“It took me 10 years to get to the soloist status, and it was hard work to get there,” she said. “I felt like finally I was able to enjoy a new aspect of my life.”
Mr. Keenan, 40, grew up in Manhattan and received a bachelor’s degree in government from Harvard. He wrote about his experiences playing hockey in countries like Finland, Sweden and Belgium in his first memoir, published in 2016. That same year, he received an M.B.A. from Columbia, and then, after a stint as a banker, wrote a second memoir, published in 2020: “Discussion Materials: Tales of a Rookie Wall Street Investment Banker.” When he met Ms. MacKinnon, Mr. Keenan was the chief operating officer of Airmail, a digital weekly, a role he left after Airmail was bought by the media company Puck last year.
Mr. Keenan’s latest book, a romance novel about a hockey player and a ballerina called “The Swan and the Sentinel,” will be published in June. He said that it was not autobiographical, but that “having found the love of my life, writing a happily-ever-after story was easier.”
After their first date, Ms. MacKinnon and Mr. Keenan’s relationship progressed steadily. She felt secure because he was clear about his intentions, and he appreciated how down to earth she was. They discovered that they liked visiting farmers’ markets and cooking together.
Ms. MacKinnon said she was surprised to learn that, in his home, Mr. Keenan was more “organized and routine-oriented and regimented than I was.” At first, she found it intimidating and tried to do everything exactly right. But, she said, she quickly realized that if the relationship was going to work long-term, they would need to compromise.
“We never, ever fight, but if there was anything I’d get aggravated about, it was when he’d say, ‘You’re leaving a trail of your things,’” Ms. MacKinnon said. “And I was like, ‘There isn’t a trail, it’s my bobby pins from my bun.’ It took a couple of conversations. Bill hadn’t been in a long-term relationship and didn’t really let someone in until me, so those were some things we had to sort through. He was getting used to the idea that I’d be there for life.”
Mr. Keenan said that the conversations had helped him grow and become more patient.
“I was able to do what I wanted, how I wanted, when I wanted, my whole life, and as you get older and live alone, you can get more set in your ways,” he said. But then, he said, you realize that the way to maintain an intimate connection with someone else “is to change yourself — and usually you change yourself for the better.”
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Last year, on April 25, Ms. MacKinnon and Mr. Keenan were visiting an apartment on the Upper West Side that they have since bought together. They were there to take measurements of some of the sellers’ furniture to decide what to keep. While they were in the parlor, Ms. MacKinnon’s favorite room, Mr. Keenan began speaking about the memories they would make in their new home.
“He started getting a little emotional, and I thought, He’s so excited,” Ms. MacKinnon said.
“Then I said, ‘This will be the first memory,’ and I got on one knee,” Mr. Keenan said.
After Mr. Keenan proposed and Ms. MacKinnon said yes, they went to the balcony, where Ms. Green’s husband was waiting to capture the moment on camera. That evening, Ms. MacKinnon performed in Balanchine’s “Ballo della Regina” with Mr. Keenan in the audience. And afterward, the couple had a small celebration at Ms. Green’s apartment with cupcakes and champagne.
Ms. MacKinnon and Mr. Keenan were married on March 7 at Central Presbyterian Church on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in front of 135 guests. Michael Keller, the senior pastor at Redeemer Lincoln Square, another church Ms. MacKinnon and Mr. Keenan frequent, officiated the ceremony.
Ms. MacKinnon first visited Central Presbyterian before she met Mr. Keenan.
“I remember looking at my sister at our first service there and saying, ‘I could see myself getting married in this church,’” Ms. MacKinnon said.
The reception was held a block away at the Colony Club, a women-only private club where Mr. Keenan’s godmother is a member.
Wanting to incorporate ballet influences, Ms. MacKinnon walked down the aisle to the “Nutcracker” pas de deux. Every table was named after one of the couple’s favorite ballets, including “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” and “Sleeping Beauty.” Ms. MacKinnon’s sister, Mary Thomas MacKinnon, who is also a soloist in the New York City Ballet, choreographed the couple’s first dance to a waltz from the film “The Princess Diaries.”
“I knew it would be something easy for Bill in terms of the musicality and the counts, but the song meant a lot to me because I grew up watching the movie,” Ms. MacKinnon said.
Wanting the lace flowers on her wedding dress to look like tutus, Ms. MacKinnon went on a hunt for a dressmaker and found Maggie Outsey in Mobile.
“I told her I wanted the lace that we sourced to look like it was dancing on my dress,” Ms. MacKinnon said. “She hand-sewed every single piece of lace on my skirt. Every time I moved, it looked different.”
Ms. MacKinnon said that planning her own wedding was a unique and worthwhile experience.
“As a dancer, I’m so used to having choreographers or repertory directors give me steps, and I perform them,” she said, “so to have this opportunity to choreograph our day exactly how I wanted it was a lot, but it was so special to see it all come to life.”
On This Day
When March 7, 2026
Where Central Presbyterian Church, New York
Coming Up Roses As a child, Ms. MacKinnon was nicknamed Rosebud by her parents, so roses figured prominently in the decorations. The florals included English garden roses that the florist “opened up to look like tutus,” Ms. MacKinnon said. Ms. MacKinnon and her sister also spent an evening folding all the cloth napkins into rosebud shapes.
Wedding Crest The stationery company, Soirée Signatures, designed a wedding crest featuring the couple’s initials, hockey sticks, pointe shoes, books with a quill and an inkwell, and various flowers (including a rose). Bella Figura printed the crest onto napkins, menu cards and matchbooks.
Southern Comforts Following a Southern tradition, Ms. MacKinnon and Mr. Keenan drank from silver goblets with ribbons and flowers wrapped around the stems. Ms. MacKinnon also chose camellia and magnolia foliage for the décor. “That’s what I think of when I’m missing home,” Ms. MacKinnon said.
The post Once a Soloist, a Ballerina Finds Her Partner for Life appeared first on New York Times.
