Ana Milagros Escalante and Robert Chandler Lucas ran in different social circles at American Heritage School in Plantation, Fla., and say they did not initially like each other.
By senior year of high school, however, Escalante was going through a challenging period with her friends, and Lucas noticed. “So I asked her to grab coffee,” he said.
Soon after that coffee date in 2017, they met during lunch breaks and talked on FaceTime most nights. “We realized we had more in common than we thought,” Lucas said.
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On Valentine’s Day, Lucas took Escalante on their first proper date to Panna, a Venezuelan restaurant in Weston, Fla., where Escalante, whose family is from Caracas, ordered several of her favorite childhood dishes. (Lucas had never tried the cuisine before.) They talked about their plans after graduating: Escalante was going to travel to Tokyo for a gap year, and Lucas was headed to Indiana University. The following day, they became exclusive.
“I certainly wasn’t looking for a relationship, and even then, I never could have imagined that it would be something serious,” Escalante said. “Perhaps like a little summer fling before I left for Japan. But it just felt so natural and easy that neither of us thought, ‘Why stop a good thing? Let’s just continue this and see how it goes.”
Lucas, 27, is a health care associate at the Huron Consulting Group based in Chicago. He was born in Davie, Fla., and graduated from Indiana University with a bachelor’s degree in business.
Escalante, also 27, grew up in Weston and graduated magna cum laude from the University of Florida with a bachelor’s degree in journalism. She is the associate features editor at Who What Wear, based in New York.
In June 2017, Escalante moved to Tokyo, and Lucas left for Indiana University two months later. “I don’t think we ever sat down and had that conversation of how to navigate long-distance,” Lucas said. “It was her saying, ‘Oh, I’m going to Japan,’ and me replying, ‘All right, well I’ll see you in three months when I come visit.’”
“We met up as often as we could on meager student budgets, which, outside of major holidays of flying home to see our parents, wasn’t often,” Escalante said.
Lucas flew to Japan to visit Escalante that summer, his first international trip alone. The two spontaneously bought tickets to the Fuji Rock Festival, held in late July at the Naeba Ski Resort in Niigata Prefecture, Japan. “We were wholly underprepared,” Escalante said. “We bought a tent the day before and were severely underdressed.”
The area is known for torrential downpours, and that year was no exception. During their stay, Escalante accidentally left their luggage in a section of the tent that wasn’t waterproofed, which soaked all their clothes. “There is nothing Robert hates more than being cold and wet, especially both at the same time,” Escalante said. And yet — “he never got mad at me or asked, ‘Why did you do that?’”
“I thought, I can be upset and wear cold clothes, or I can wear cold clothes and try to make the most of it,” Lucas said. “If we can survive this, we can survive a lot.”
In August 2022, after five years of a long-distance relationship, which included visits between Florida and Indiana, the couple moved into their first apartment together in the Kips Bay neighborhood of Manhattan. They have since moved twice more and currently live in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, with their pug, Holly.
On April 3, 2025, Lucas proposed with a yellow diamond ring designed by Escalante’s friend, Steph Mazuera, on a surprise trip he organized to Japan. Afterward, they celebrated with beer and yakiniku, a Japanese-style barbecue, in the Yanaka neighborhood of Tokyo.
They were married May 19 by Divina Dunlap, an officiant at the Manhattan City Clerk’s office, with Lucas’s mother, Patti Lucas, as their witness. Afterward, they celebrated with seven guests at Balthazar in SoHo, with champagne and steak frites.
“Our relationship was built on chasing each other throughout the world, through long distances, across time zones, and eventually to New York,” Escalante said. “It only made sense to close this chapter intimately here before chasing each other around the world again this fall.”
The couple plans to host a Catholic ceremony with about 260 guests on Oct. 2, in Madrid.
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