Molly Alane Ryan was sitting in a hospital emergency room in Brooklyn with a throbbing broken toe when a guy from Pennsylvania she’d met once, more than a decade earlier, slid into her Instagram DMs.
Typically, she wouldn’t respond to random notes online, but after smashing her foot wading in six-inch heels through the flooded basement of a Williamsburg bar she ran at the time, she figured she might as well distract herself while waiting for a doctor. She answered the message from Jesse Alexander Howard-Bloom, and they chatted on the app for six hours. That was April 18, 2025.
“I pretty much fell in love talking to him that night,” Ryan said.
But before the conversation meandered from music to movies to the margarita Ryan had sneaked into the E.R., the two had a misunderstanding to address. Howard-Bloom had not stood Ryan up on a date 10 years before, as she believed. Nor had she blown him off.
Comparing notes, they realized their ill-fated plans had come undone because of crossed signals worthy of a romantic comedy.
Howard-Bloom, an experimental composer and recording artist, first met Ryan in 2014 when his band Crowhurst played at a party in Williamsburg hosted by the Spectrum, a queer arts and nightlife community. Ryan has worked in queer nightclubs since moving to New York in 2013 from Kansas City, Mo.
Backstage, Howard-Bloom noticed Ryan in a bubble gum pink organza ball gown she had sewn by hand. She was “the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen,” he said.
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A day later, he messaged her saying he’d love to meet up when he next came through New York on tour. That opportunity arose the following year, and she told him to meet her at Lovegun, a Brooklyn bar and nightclub that has since closed. Unaware she worked there, he scanned the crowd but didn’t think to check behind the bar. She spotted him from afar, but when she looked again, he was gone.
Howard-Bloom had texted to ask where she was, but Ryan doesn’t always check messages, or even keep her phone charged, and he didn’t want to press the matter. “I was like, ‘OK, I get the picture,’” he said.
Fast forward to 2025. Howard-Bloom couldn’t summon enthusiasm for any of his dating prospects and his friends offered advice.
“You need to go out and find the most dynamic, outrageous woman you’ve ever met and reach out to them because what you’ve got going on over here is not cutting it,” Howard-Bloom remembers them saying.
Ryan instantly came to mind and he sent a message while she awaited care for her toe.
“Hey, weird, but we hung out literally a decade ago while I was on tour and l’ve always thought you were pretty rad,” the note read.
During their conversation, Ryan mentioned her favorite musical, “The Light in the Piazza.” The next day, Howard-Bloom announced he’d gotten two tickets to a performance of the show in Boston.
A few weeks later, he traveled from Reading, Pa., where he lived, to New York, but instead of taking a train to Boston together as planned, they had dinner at Wei’s, a Chinese restaurant in Williamsburg, attended a friend’s burlesque show and bar hopped. Watching how easily Howard-Bloom meshed with her social circle, “I was like, where did you come from?” Ryan said.
Howard-Bloom found himself equally surprised by their connection.
“It was a crazy night that ended in us basically communicating, ‘We’re meant for each other,’” he said. “Every moment I spent with her just felt like the most exciting time of my life.”
Ryan, 34, grew up in Oklahoma City and earned a bachelor of fine arts in interdisciplinary sculpture and creative writing from Kansas City Art Institute. Howard-Bloom, 37, was born in New York City before his family moved to Huntington, N.Y., and then to Boca Raton, Fla. He studied advertising at the Art Institute of Philadelphia and now splits his time between Reading and New York.
Howard-Bloom proposed to Ryan on Nov. 5, 2025, at New York’s Metropolitan Opera House during the intermission of “La Bohème,” the opera Cher and Nicolas Cage watched at the Met in “Moonstruck.” The film has special meaning for Ryan since her paternal grandmother Mimi left her a DVD of it when she died.
The couple wed July 30 at Paragon, a dance club and bar in Brooklyn, with their friend Harrison Curley officiating after obtaining an officiant’s license from the Office of the City Clerk. About 150 guests attended the ceremony and more joined for the celebration afterward, where DJs spun and Tatum Alurra, a tattoo artist, inked guests.
Ryan and Howard-Bloom are intimately familiar with Alurra’s work. She gave them matching tattoos after they started dating — a flurry of bunnies that adorn the back of her right hand and his right backside.
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