As they walked loops around Central Park during their first date on Sept. 10, 2022, Alyannah Kassam and Malik Ladhani were surprised by their similar backgrounds.
Kassam and Ladhani, who matched on Hinge a week earlier, learned they were both Ismaili Muslims of Indian descent whose families had settled in East Africa before immigrating to Canada in the early 1970s. Each grew up in suburbs outside Toronto and settled in Manhattan after coming to the United States for school.
Kassam was drawn to Ladhani’s peaceful and humble demeanor, while Ladhani was attracted to Kassam’s warmth and humor.
“We laughed a lot,” Ladhani said. “It felt like we had known each other for so long in that first date. It felt like we were already really connected.”
Two weeks later, when Kassam went home to Richmond Hill, Ontario, to visit her family, her mother asked if she was seeing anyone.
“I said, ‘Oh, I went on a date with this Ismaili guy from Toronto actually — his name is Malik,’” she said. “And she’s like, ‘Wait, what’s his last name?’”
They soon pieced together that Kassam and Ladhani’s fathers had been friends at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, and had even gone on a road trip together to New York City in 1979. Their fathers lost touch after college, but still bumped into each other occasionally at Ismaili houses of worship in the Toronto area.
When Kassam told Ladhani about the connection, she said, “Both of us were like, this is so crazy. What are the odds of this happening?”
On the same visit back home, Kassam made another improbable discovery when she randomly texted Ladhani asking about his birth date. Turns out, they were both born on the same day, Oct. 28, just three years apart. “He sent me a picture of his driver’s license to prove it,” she said.
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Buoyed by these serendipitous connections, the pair continued seeing each other frequently in New York. “We spent so much time together, and it felt so natural,” Ladhani said. “I was pretty smitten, very quickly.”
Ladhani, 33, is a partner in the law firm Simpson Thacher & Bartlett in the mergers and acquisitions practice. He holds a bachelor’s degree in political science and economics from the University of Ottawa and a law degree from Harvard Law School.
Kassam, 30, is a director at EY-Parthenon, the strategy consulting arm of Ernst & Young, in the corporate real estate mergers and acquisitions practice. She has a bachelor’s degree in hotel administration from Cornell.
The couple became official in December 2022, three months after they met, when Ladhani returned from the World Cup in Qatar. While he was away, Ladhani kept wishing that Kassam was with him. He said he realized that she “is someone who I want to be experiencing life with.”
Before Ladhani’s flight home landed, Kassam took two trains and a bus in the rain to pick up doughnuts in Queens from the Canadian chain Tim Hortons. After she greeted him at his Murray Hill apartment with the treats, he surprised her by asking if she would be his girlfriend.
In August 2024, Ladhani moved into Kassam’s Upper East Side apartment, where they still reside, close to the paths in Central Park where they had their first date.
Over the years, the couple developed two traditions. Every fall, they celebrate their shared birthday with a joint party, inviting friends for activities like a Ping-Pong tournament or a Bollywood-themed cycling class. Every winter, they skate at an outdoor New York City rink, in a nod to their Canadian upbringing and years playing ice hockey.
In April 2025, Ladhani proposed in Tokyo’s Yoyogi Park while on vacation. Knowing that Kassam loved cherry blossoms, Ladhani worked with a local photographer to pinpoint the best flowering trees. When the couple took a selfie at the designated spot, the photographer, posing as a tourist, offered to take their picture — which was Ladhani’s cue to get down on one knee.
They married July 14 at the New York City Marriage Bureau. Yanfang Chen, a city clerk, officiated, with the couple’s mothers serving as witnesses. Afterward, they celebrated with their parents and other immediate family members by watching a World Cup game and eating dinner at the Ambassadors Clubhouse, a Punjabi restaurant in Manhattan’s NoMad neighborhood.
On Aug. 8, they will host a religious ceremony and wedding reception with 120 guests at the Ismaili Center in Lisbon. The couple are excited to weave Ismaili rituals with Indian cultural traditions as a celebration of the many happy happenstances that brought them together.
“It was lucky that we met on Hinge, totally by the algorithm,” Kassam said. But — “it feels like all of these little things were already written in the stars before we even met.”
The post It Was ‘Written in the Stars’ Even Before They Met appeared first on New York Times.
