Even Stevie Wonder singing “Overjoyed” live on a sunny June afternoon couldn’t eclipse the love between Michael Clinton Elliot and Adia Zuri May as she walked down the aisle at Cielo Farms, a vineyard in Malibu, Calif., overlooking the Santa Monica Mountains.
The moment that had been nearly 14 years in the making began with a chance meeting at Los Angeles International Airport.
In October 2012, while waiting to board a flight to Washington, Elliot couldn’t take his eyes off May.
She was traveling with her sister, Asha, to attend homecoming at Howard University, from which May earned a bachelor’s degree in business administration before receiving a law degree and an M.B.A. from the University of Iowa.
A Chicago native, she began her legal career at Wildman, Harrold, Allen & Dixon before moving to Los Angeles, where she worked as an entertainment lawyer, advising the Screen Actors Guild and holding senior business affairs roles at Codeblack Films and William Morris Endeavor, before starting her own law firm.
Elliot was headed to Washington for a conference. From across the terminal, May caught him looking at her. Her sister noticed, too.
“My sister leans over and says, ‘You see this dude?’ I said, ‘Do I know him?’ She said, ‘I’m going to say something.’ I told her, ‘No, don’t say anything.’” As they boarded, her sister kicked off a conversation with Elliot and introduced May.
For Elliot, the encounter would become the beginning of a story that took more than a decade to complete.
He has written some of Hollywood’s most recognizable love stories, including “Brown Sugar,” “Just Wright,” and “Ruth & Boaz,” which premiered on Netflix last year.
Raised in Philadelphia, Elliot began writing for hip-hop magazines and served as director of special projects for The Source, before moving to Los Angeles to pursue a film career. “I felt like God gave me this talent even when I didn’t know it,” he said. “I went from deciding to be a screenwriter to, 14 months later, selling my very first script to 20th Century Fox.” (He recently started Cinema Puzzles, offering more than 250 licensed puzzles featuring scenes from blockbuster movies.)
Yet while he spent his career captivating audiences and creating characters who find lasting love, his own happily ever after remained elusive.
“I could write about love,” Elliot, 59, said. “I just didn’t know if I believed I could keep it.”
After meeting at the airport, Elliot asked for May’s number and, once they were both back in Los Angeles, he took her out to dinner. For a few months, they dated and explored an undeniable chemistry, yet their relationship failed to progress.
“I started to wonder, ‘What are we doing here?’ But when you have to ask that, you already know,” May said. “So I asked him. He was like, ‘Who needs titles?’” She realized he wasn’t offering anything serious and made the tough decision to move on.
For the next 12 years, Elliot quietly carried the regret of losing the woman he came to think of as “the one who got away.”
Every few years, when he was single, he sent May an email. Sometimes it was to congratulate her on a professional milestone. Once, he asked for a business favor. Another time, he reached out through her sister, hoping she would agree to a conversation.
She declined every invitation.
“I was done,” May, 50, said. “When I left, I really left.”
It would take more than a decade for Elliot to become the man he wished he had been when they first met.
After his second marriage ended in divorce in 2021, he continued writing films about love while confronting the wounds that had shaped his own relationships. He realized his fear of commitment traced back to childhood abandonment, when, as a teenager, he became a ward of the state after his mother relinquished custody. He lived at a boys’ home his junior year of high school.
“It was my secret shame,” he said. “I always wanted love. I just didn’t believe it would stay.”
After his divorce, he moved to Chattahoochee Hills, Ga., giving him space to examine his past.
After becoming a ward of the state, he had only seen his mother two or three times since turning 20, before finally inviting her to dinner. During that conversation, he learned she was raising a son while still a teenager herself after giving birth to him at age 14.
“I stopped seeing her as the villain of my story,” he said.
Reconnecting with his mother changed how Elliot understood love, forgiveness and commitment, leaving him ready to reach out to May again.
That opportunity arrived unexpectedly in August 2024.
May wasn’t thinking about romance when she reached out to Elliot. One of her clients had an interest involving Hammer & Nails Grooming Shop for Guys, the franchise business Elliot founded, and she thought he might make an introduction. The business opportunity didn’t materialize, but their conversation did.
A few months later, he invited her to meet for lunch in Los Angeles.
At the end of the meal, Elliot asked whether May was seeing anyone.
When she said she was single, he told her everything he had wanted to say for more than a decade. He told her he had never forgotten her. He shared how reconnecting with his mother had changed him. Then he made a promise.
“If you gave me another chance,” he told her at their first meeting in 12 years, “I’d marry you.”
May left the restaurant stunned. “I just kept saying, ‘What in the world just happened?’” she recalled.
For two weeks, she wrestled with whether to believe him.
“I thought there were only two possibilities,” she said. “Either he was exactly the same man, or he had truly become someone different. I’d never know unless I gave him a chance.”
When May called two weeks after their lunch, they talked for three hours. Elliot was so surprised the conversation had lasted that long that he took screenshots of his phone every 30 minutes, wanting proof later that it had really happened.
Within days, Elliot leased an apartment in Los Angeles and moved from Georgia to begin pursuing the relationship in earnest, unbeknown to May.
Still, winning back May’s trust would take time.
“I was cold,” she admitted. “I was still holding on to the heartbreak.”
The turning point came on New Year’s Day. Elliot gently told her he couldn’t continue pursuing someone who seemed emotionally closed off. May realized she would have to make a choice.
“I had to open my own heart,” she said.
A month later, she told him she was ready to be exclusive.
Elliot already knew where the relationship was headed. He spent months planning a proposal. May thought it might happen during a Memorial Day trip to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. She packed white dresses, had white nails and told family members to expect an engagement. Nothing happened, much to her disappointment and his amusement.
Binge more Vows columns here and read all our wedding, relationship and divorce coverage here.
When she got back, she had planned to attend a private listening event for the Grammy Award-winning singer Major and invited Elliot.
But the listening party never existed.
Instead, she walked into a downtown Los Angeles penthouse filled with family and close friends. As Major performed his hit “This Is Why I Love You,” Elliot dropped to one knee and proposed, just as he had planned with support from her sister.
“I don’t remember anything he said,” May said of the proposal and engagement party. “It sounded like Charlie Brown. I just remember him getting down on one knee.”
“I always knew there’s good men out here,” she added. “I never lost faith that God would not forget about me.”
On June 26, the couple exchanged vows before 145 guests in a ceremony led by Touré Roberts, a senior pastor of the Potter’s House of Dallas, following a surprise performance from Stevie Wonder, a longtime friend and client of the bride, that left many in the audience in tears.
“When you see two people coming together, it is truly a blessing,” Stevie Wonder said during a toast at the reception. “I sang today because when Adia said she was getting married, I told her, ‘I’m going to sing “Overjoyed” at your wedding.’ She said, ‘What’s it going to cost?’ I said, ‘Nothing.’ The joy of meeting the love of her life was so wonderful. The fact that I could share with her was in my heart.”
Yet even a music legend and the elegant white décor created by event designer Trisha Smith Brown couldn’t overshadow the moment unfolding between the couple.
“I saw her in that dress,” Elliot said the morning after the wedding. “I couldn’t believe this was my life. I could see her smile through the veil. I felt proud because she was walking to me.”
“I was overjoyed,” she said. “I was going to my man, my husband, the man God created for me. It felt effortless — like air.”
The couple designed their celebration to feel like an intimate family reunion. Forgoing the traditional sweetheart table, they chose to sit in the center of their loved ones. May sat beside her mother, while Elliot sat next to Sierra, the younger of his two daughters.
“I’ve never had this type of experience in love,” May said. “I pray that our love reverberates.”
The next morning, Elliot found himself thinking not about the stories he had already written, but the ones still ahead.
“Today was the first day I woke up and put my wedding ring on. It feels different,” he said. “I know there are things beyond my wildest expectations that are going to be realized in this season because we’re together.”
On This Day
When June 26, 2026
Where Cielo Farms, Malibu, Calif.
Iconic Style The bride wore a custom Sergio Hudson gown featuring handmade lace inspired by the couple’s floral design. Hudson, who rarely designs bridal gowns, was present and styled the bride. For the reception, May changed into a custom mini dress by Sankara Xasha Turé. The costume designer, Marci Rodgers, helped with final touches for the groom.
Sound of Love The couple had their first dance to “If This World Were Mine,” by Cheryl Lynn and Luther Vandross. The rapper Common, a star of Elliot’s film “Just Wright,” surprised guests with a live performance.
Food & Family The chef Alisa Reynolds served elevated comfort food, including watermelon cube salad, sea bass and cornbread bites that were a favorite of guests, who traveled from London, South Africa and across the United States. Tables were named for hit Black love films, including ones written by Elliot.
The post He Wrote Hollywood Love Stories. It Took 12 Years to Finish His Own. appeared first on New York Times.
