Senti Sojwal and Ben Patrick Fuller-Googins were both optimistic about their first date when they met in October 2022. They had matched on Tinder a few weeks earlier and discovered through messages that they shared a mutual friend, Shahana Hanif, a member of the New York City Council.
Each texted her to ask about the other, and Hanif, who represents the 39th Council District in Brooklyn, encouraged them to meet. “She said we would be perfect for each other and affirmed Senti was a diamond,” Fuller-Googins said. He had been single for a while and said he was “going through the motions of dating.”
Sojwal said she was “definitely looking for the real thing and hoping it would come around.”
The two met at Ode to Babel, a since-closed bar in the Prospect Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn, and when Fuller-Googins spotted Sojwal outside waiting for him, he “stopped in his tracks,” he said. “I couldn’t believe how stunning she was, with the most piercing eyes.”
“Ben looked really sincere and thoughtful,” she said.
Over several rounds of mezcal cocktails, they had what Sojwal described as a five-hour “nonstop conversation” about their families and jobs. They quickly realized they shared a commitment to social justice and serving their communities.
Fuller-Googins, 39, who was renting an apartment at the time in Brooklyn’s Kensington neighborhood, was the deputy director of the Carroll Gardens Association, a Brooklyn organization supporting affordable housing and rights for immigrants and domestic workers. He is now the executive director of the organization.
He is from Sherborn, Mass., and has a bachelor’s degree in history from Boston College and a master’s in urban planning from N.Y.U.
Sojwal, 35, then living in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, is the communications director of Planned Parenthood of Greater New York. She grew up on Manhattan’s Upper West Side and holds a bachelor’s degree in gender studies and politics from Hampshire College in Amherst, Mass. She has a master’s degree in public health from N.Y.U.
“We bonded over shared world views shaped by working in the labor movement and the reproductive justice movement,” Sojwal said.
They also shared plenty of laughs.
“Since I have an older brother,” Fuller-Googins said, “I told Senti very seriously that my next project was going to be organizing a little brother’s union.”
They left the bar sometime after midnight, and Fuller-Googins walked Sojwal home. Just before they crossed the street, she turned to kiss him. “I knew he wanted to but was shy,” she said.
The two spoke daily from that night on.
They spent the next week texting and sending selfies before their second date. This time, they had dinner at D’antan, a now-shuttered Italian restaurant in Crown Heights, where they shared pastas and orange wine.
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They soon fell into a routine of seeing each other a few days a week. On weekdays, Fuller-Googins biked to Sojwal’s apartment after work, where they cooked dinner together. On weekends, they spent time in Prospect Park.
She was sure she had found her life partner on an ice skating date that December at LeFrak Center at Lakeside in Prospect Park. As they glided through the rink, Sojwal’s skate loosened, and she started to lose her balance. Fuller-Googins rushed to her side, knelt and tied her laces. “I felt like, this person is really going to take care of me,” she said.
In January 2023, during a weekend getaway to Rockaway Beach in Queens, Sojwal told Fuller-Googins that she wanted to define their relationship. “We were together all the time but hadn’t had the conversation about where this was headed,” she said.
Fuller-Googins said he was hesitant to be vulnerable. “Senti continually invited more of me, and in that moment, I realized I was safe with her,” Fuller-Googins said.
In September 2024, they moved into another apartment in Fuller-Googins’ building in Kensington, where they continue to live.
They became engaged in July 2025 at Socrates Sculpture Park in Astoria, Queens. Fuller-Googins told Sojwal they were meeting friends for a sunset picnic and set up a blanket. Then he burst into tears and said, “They aren’t coming.”
He got down on one knee, but when he kept crying, Sojwal asked, “So aren’t you going to ask me?” With the sun setting behind them, he proposed with a champagne diamond ring.
They married July 25 before 136 guests at Black Walnut Farm, an event venue in Saugerties, N.Y. Nicholas McKenna, a close friend of the couple who was ordained by Universal Life Church for the occasion, officiated.
Sojwal walked down the aisle to her favorite Bollywood song, “Kuch Kuch Hota Hai” (with lyrics by Sameer Anjaan), translated as “Something is Happening.” The ceremony honored her Indian roots as the couple exchanged rose garlands symbolizing their mutual acceptance and respect. In a nod to Fuller-Googins’ Irish background, his father, Bradley Googins, also read an Irish wedding blessing.
Councilwoman Hanif is, not surprisingly, pleased: “I’m so happy they hit it off,” she wrote over text. “And even happier that it grew into such a beautiful love.”
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