Korren Christina Campbell had always dreamed of getting married at her maternal grandmother’s “Pink Castle” in Easton, Md.
“‘Yup, that will be my wedding,’” Campbell would often say, enchanted by her parents’ two-hour wedding video at the Alhambra-style desert dawn pink house belonging to the woman she calls Oma. She and her two younger sisters, who grew up in various guesthouses there, watched the video on movie night sleepovers.
In October 2020, she met Jacob Robert Degler, both fresh out of college and new to Chicago, at a birthday gathering one Friday night at the Broken Barrel Bar in the Lincoln Park neighborhood.
Degler, who goes by Jake, treated her to a shot of Malört, a Chicago specialty, as they stood in line at the bar, hoping to get her number sometime that evening. But minutes later, he encountered a hiccup.
The friend, who had invited them both, had his arm around her. They had just begun casually dating.
“A piece of me thought ‘That sucks,’” Degler said, but for the sake of friendship, quickly switched gears. “I met this cool girl that could be a friend.”
Degler, who grew up in Cary, N.C., moved to Chicago after graduating cum laude with a bachelor’s degree in business administration from the University of Dayton. He had fallen in love with the city after his father took him to Lollapalooza music festivals in Grant Park every summer, from 2011 to 2019.
Later, the group took an Uber to his apartment in Old Town, where he played his Yamaha acoustic guitar and sang Vance Joy’s “Riptide” with a friend of hers. At least every other week, a bunch of them hung out, often on Campbell’s rooftop, which had a great view of Wrigley Field lit up at night.
As Campbell buckled down for 1L finals during her first semester of law school at the University of Illinois, Chicago, where she received a law degree cum laude, her relationship drifted into friendship mode.
She and Degler, who usually gravitated to each other as good friends, soon became more flirty. At the end of November, they spent the entire evening together at her roommate’s birthday party, and he invited her to join him and friends at an Airbnb with a pool in Tampa, Fla., for New Year’s Eve. Later, a good night hug turned into a kiss.
“He’s going to have a very significant part in my life,” Campbell, who graduated with a bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of Delaware, recalled thinking. She bought a plane ticket for Florida the next day, while Degler, who had planned to spend Covid that winter working remotely from his parents’ place in Delray Beach, Fla., flew down the next weekend.
Over Christmas, the two chatted on various platforms — sometimes several at once.
“We couldn’t get enough of each other,” said Campbell, an associate in the commercial real estate transactions practice at Polsinelli in Chicago.
Both 28, they also shared the same birthday — Feb. 18.
“I’m about three hours wiser and older,” said Degler, now an executive account manager at CDW Government, a tech company in Vernon Hills, Ill., that sells technology to the U.S. Defense Department. He is also a founder of VinHausa, an events company blending yoga and live house music in Chicago.
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Before driving to Tampa, he invited her to his parents’ house, where they skipped his father’s barbecued ribs for black bean burgers because both are vegetarians.
After the holiday weekend, he dropped her off at the airport, and couldn’t stop thinking about her on his drive back to his parents’ place.
“I won’t give up an amazing person for sunshine,” Degler said.
So he flew to Chicago the next weekend.
At the end of January, on a trip to Fort Lauderdale, he asked her to be his girlfriend, and then had their first formal date on Valentine’s Day at Topo Gigio Ristorante, an Italian restaurant in Old Town.
At home she enjoyed Degler’s specialty — homemade vegetable Ramen — and he introduced her to Arsenal soccer matches on weekends, accompanied by Bloody Marys.
In August 2022, they adopted Player, a golden retriever, just before moving into a two-bedroom apartment in Old Town. One bedroom became “a museum of facts,” he said, with Post-it notes everywhere as she studied for the bar. He had two bottles of Champagne ready when she passed in 2023.
The couple, who now live in the Fulton Market area, regularly get up at 6 a.m. for hourlong walks with Player and no cellphones.
In early August 2024, Degler got down on one knee in Logan Square Park.
On May 16, Campbell’s dream came true.
She walked from the front door of her grandmother’s “Pink Castle” to the Miles River, bordering it, in a strapless ball gown by the Dubai-based designer Marmar Halim as two violinists played Elvis Presley’s “Can’t Help Falling in Love.” Pastor Keith Maxwell, affiliated with the Easton Church of God, officiated before 142 guests, including her grandmother, Oma, as always in signature pink, wearing a pink shawl and pink jacket.
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