Noah Henry Koeppel got a first glimpse of Taylor Michelle Ross in a family photo courtesy of her father — his father’s new golf buddy.
First, he asked Mr. Koeppel, who was “kind of taken aback,” if he was single as they walked along the ninth fairway at Apogee Golf Club in Hobe Sound, Fla.
He and his younger brother, already engaged, and both golfers, were visiting their parents in Palm Beach Shores during Presidents’ Day weekend in February 2024.
After Mr. Koeppel confirmed he was single, Ms. Ross’s father pointed her out in the photo.
“She was cute,” said Mr. Koeppel, 31, a transactional real estate lawyer in the New York office of Fried Frank. He graduated cum laude with a bachelor’s degree in public policy and law from Trinity College in Hartford and received a law degree from Fordham.
Mr. Koeppel was used to his mother and her friends setting him up on a date or two a month, but never anyone’s father, including his own, who passed along her phone number a couple of weeks later.
“Both our dads went to our moms for guidance,” he said, and were a bit jittery about jeopardizing their friendship if things didn’t work out.
Ms. Ross was not thrilled.
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“My dad is not a busybody,” Ms. Ross said, “but he meets a new friend, and sets me up with his son? No thanks.”
Ms. Ross, 32, who graduated with a bachelor’s degree in finance from Tulane, is a director in business development at Waterfall Asset Management, an alternative credit firm in New York.
After she called off two dates because of a cold, they finally met on a Tuesday evening in mid-April over drinks at Do Not Disturb, a bar in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village.
After a pleasant enough evening, she agreed to dinner a week later at Pasquale Jones, an Italian restaurant in NoLIta, but no more.
“It was so great meeting you,” she said when he asked her out again. “My next few weeks are very hectic. I’m sure I’ll see you around. You should play golf with my brother.”
Ouch.
“It was like a triple bogey on the first hole,” Mr. Koeppel said. But he wasn’t willing to concede the whole game just yet.
At the end of July, he sent her a breezy text.
“Hey, how’s your summer going?” he said. He later added, “No pressure, I’d like to go out again to grab dinner.”
On July 31, a sweltering Thursday night, they met at L’Artusi Supper Club in Greenwich Village, and he quickly brought her water.
“I was so frazzled,” she said, from the heat. They later hugged good night after he walked her to her place in the neighborhood, and then headed home to the Upper East Side.
They met again the following weekend, while visiting their parents, who have homes minutes apart in Southampton, N.Y. Their parents also have homes close by in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., and near their main residences on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.
He picked her up in his black Jeep Wrangler for dinner at Sag Harbor Tavern, followed by drinks at the nearby Vin Sur Vingt Bistro. Later, with ice cream from Big Olaf — Mr. Koeppel, who loves chocolate, had his usual — they found a nearby bench. With fireworks in sight, they had a first kiss.
During Labor Day weekend, he met her brother for golf, and the two young men became close friends and golf buddies. Later, at the beach, she met a bunch of his friends and hit it off with his sister. But when he asked her to be his plus one at his brother’s wedding in September, she said no.
“It was too much too soon,” Ms. Ross said. But “he asked 100 times” over the next few weeks, she said. She finally agreed one Saturday afternoon over burgers and Bloody Marys at JG Melon on the Upper East Side.
In October, she realized how much he meant to her.
“I never want to be apart from him again,” she recalled thinking after a weekend with him in the Hamptons.
In early March 2025, she moved into his place.
That August, in Southampton, Mr. Koeppel told her that he wanted to say “hi” to some friends on Cryder Beach. “Why are we walking so far?” she said, and when they reached a picnic blanket set with flowers, he got down on one knee.
On Feb. 21, Rabbi Neil Zuckerman, affiliated with the Park Avenue Synagogue, officiated before 228 guests at the New York Public Library. Ms. Ross walked down the aisle in a regal Vivienne Westwood Nova Bagatelle gown to a 10-member choir singing “Halo” by Beyoncé.
Although a remarkable blizzard held off for the wedding, their flight to Cape Town, South Africa, the next day from Kennedy Airport was canceled.
“My mom and Noah’s mom figured out a way to execute a plan in the middle of a snowstorm via a train, plane and automobile,” to Atlanta, Ms. Ross said, and soon they were on safari in the Kruger National Park area, where they saw giraffes, elephants, lions and leopards.
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