Dr. Jeffrey Brian Petigrow and Emma Ozra Famili shared the same requirement of a future partner: They had to care about and be involved in making the world a better place.
“That was what drew me to Emma from day one: Oh wow, this person cares about helping others and advocacy,” said Petigrow, 36. “Maybe even more so than me.”
“Jeff understands why I work so much, and I understand why he works so much,” said Famili, 26, whose past romances had suffered because of her many professional commitments. “We both care about disability rights, and want to make people feel welcomed and happy.”
For each, career and compassion are inexorably linked.
Petigrow, who grew up in West Orange, N.J., and received a bachelor’s degree in business from the University of Michigan, began his career in finance in New York. When a close colleague was diagnosed with breast cancer, he witnessed her illness and death at close range. It changed his path.
“I saw the impact that medicine and novel cancer therapies had in her life, and wanted to use my business skills in this area,” he said. He pivoted to medicine, moving through the post-baccalaureate program at Johns Hopkins before earning a medical degree at the University of Pittsburgh.
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After earning a bachelor’s in health and human services from St. John’s University and a master’s in social work from Columbia, Famili, who is from Pittsburgh, worked in several federal offices, including the Department of Justice and the Department of Housing and Urban Development. In addition to a part-time role at ACEing Autism and Pittsburgh Behavioral Services, and contract work at the Pennsylvania Prison Society, she is the assistant director of programs at the Iranian American Legal Defense Fund.
The couple met in June 2022 at a clinic for ACEing Autism, a nonprofit group that helps children with autism build skills through tennis. As program director for the Pittsburgh chapter, Famili was managing the event, for which Petigrow, who has family members with autism, was volunteering. When she offered to grab coffee for participants, he asked for an iced latte — and a tennis lesson.
It was the first of many coffee meetups. The pair secretly hoped each one might turn romantic, but they often felt more like professional networking. “We went on 10,000 coffee dates, basically,” Famili said.
Petigrow estimates the number was more like six, but the point still stands. “My therapist at the time was like, ‘Jeff, how much caffeine can you drink with this person? I think it’s time to ask her on a real date,’” he said.
They finally acknowledged their crushes on each other over ice cream at Sarris Candies in Canonsburg, Pa., in August 2022. “We’d hung out so much at that point that I felt really comfortable with him,” she said.
“We had so much in common,” Petigrow said. “I loved her mentality about life.” But a crossroads came early: She had a job offer in Washington, and he didn’t like the idea of a long-distance relationship. “It was awkward timing,” Famili said.
But, “when she found out she’d be working remote, I saw the doors open,” Petigrow said. “From there, it just grew.”
Because Famili hates surprises, they chose an engagement ring together in April 2024. On May 30, 2024, he brought her to Schenley Park in Pittsburgh, where she’d given him tennis lessons on an early date. Next to a bench overlooking the city’s skyline at sunset, he knelt down and proposed.
They married on May 2 at the Museum of Arts and Design in Manhattan. The ceremony was officiated by Cantor Shira Ginsburg and blended the groom’s Judaism and the bride’s Persian heritage. Book-ended events nodded to their love story: a tennis party on Friday evening, and on Sunday morning, a coffee send-off on the balcony of their hotel suite at the New York Athletic Club.
The newlyweds will soon move to New York for Petigrow’s residency at Montefiore Medical Center. “We have so many friends in New York, and his family’s there,” Famili said. “It feels like we’re both going home.”
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