When Robert Owen Brown III showed up at a Sofar Sounds live music event in Manhattan’s SoHo neighborhood in June 2015, Sophie Anna Everhard was working the door. When she checked for his name on the guest list, she couldn’t find it.
She let him in any way. “I thought he was cute,” she said. “And I couldn’t tell if he was flirting with me.”
“I was,” he said.
The two ended up talking all evening. “I was waiting for the right moment to ask for her number,” said Brown, who goes by Owen, “and before I could, I saw her heading out the door.”
He ran after her but never caught up and had no way of getting in touch.
So, when his mother and brother came to visit him 11 days later, he took them to a Sofar Sounds show, thinking they would enjoy it. “I also thought that maybe she’d be there,” he added.
She was. They once again spent the evening talking. But this time, he got her phone number and invited her to see TOMI, a singer-songwriter, at the now-paused CMJ music festival on Oct. 18, 2015. Later that night, they went to see live jazz, and he eventually kissed her.
“She pushed me away,” he said. “That’s when she told me she had a boyfriend of three years.” He was devastated.
After that night, Brown knew he needed to ask her to do something so amazing she couldn’t say no. He invited her to see the musical artist Tove Lo.
“I said yes because he did a really good job of phrasing it like it was a friend date,” she said. But an hour before the show, she canceled via text.
“I probably cried,” Brown said. Still, he tried again, inviting her to see the electronic group Disclosure at Madison Square Garden on Oct. 24. She said yes.
“I was fully prepared to be friend-zoned,” Brown said. But when they got there, Everhard said the words he could not have been happier to hear: “I broke up with my boyfriend.”
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Just shy of a year later, they celebrated their first anniversary back at Madison Square Garden with front row seats for Adele and their second anniversary at a Neon Gold show featuring Billie Eilish.
In March 2018, Brown moved into Everhard’s apartment in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
Brown, 37, is a creative director and the founder of CTRL5, a creative agency for artists. He has worked with Barack Obama, Apple Music, Budweiser and Warner Music Group. He holds a bachelor’s in political science from George Washington University and a master’s in journalism from Columbia University’s School of Journalism. He was born in New York City and grew up in Tortola, the British Virgin Islands, and Charleston, S.C.
Everhard, 32, is an actress who has appeared on Nickelodeon and ABC, as well as starred in the 2008 film “The Clique.” She has a bachelor’s degree in visual narratives from NYU Gallatin School of Individualized Study. She was born in Fairfield, Calif., and raised in Castle Rock, Colo.
Eleven years after they attended CMJ together — on Oct. 18, 2025 — the two sat down to dinner at Coqodaq in the Flatiron district ahead of a Billie Eilish concert at Madison Square Garden. “I told her we unfortunately had to rush because I needed to get to Madison Square Garden for a meeting,” Brown said.
Because of some major planning on Brown’s part, a staff member at the Garden met them when they arrived and led them to their seats, where a sign was sitting. “I told Sophie to go see what it said,” Brown said.
“Reserved for Sophie and Owen,” it read. “See back for details.” There, Everhard found a letter from Brown asking her to marry him.
“By the end of the proposal, the entire arena was cheering for us,” as waiting fans took notice, Brown said.
The night before the wedding, the couple hosted a Shabbat dinner for 200 guests in Charleston at a table built directly on the city’s 300-foot dock.
They married May 16 at American Gardens, a park in Charleston. Tomos Lovett, a friend of the couple who was ordained for the occasion by Universal Life Church, officiated before 180 guests. A reception followed at the nearby Cooper Hotel.
The couple’s first dance was to a live performance of “End of Everything” by the artists Jalen Reyes and Dylan Lee. “It wasn’t just one of my favorite moments of the wedding,” Everhard said. “It was one of my favorite moments of my life.”
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