The first thing Ryann Murphy and Dr. Michael Albert Apa ever talked about was her teeth.
On June 12, 2021, “I posted a photo to my story on Instagram with a big smile,” Murphy said, “and wrote a caption about getting my teeth whitened for a photo shoot.”
Apa, the founder of Apa Aesthetic, an international dental practice with four locations, sent her a direct, professional message that read: “Stunning. I’d say if you ever need anything with your teeth, come in, but you have a gorgeous smile.”
A few weeks later, Murphy took him up on the offer on July 11, 2021, visiting Apa the next time he was at his Los Angeles office.
They exchanged a few DMs in the months between her July 11 appointment and the next one on Oct. 22.
But on that second visit, Murphy was greeted with a surprise: a dozen cake batter cupcakes from Molly’s Cupcakes in New York. After seeing her post on Instagram about her love for cake batter- flavored treats, Apa made a point of bringing something sweet back for her while he was at his New York location.
“It was a real ‘if he wanted to, he would’ moment,” Murphy said.
That was the day the two finally exchanged phone numbers and when the tenor of their conversations began to change. “It started getting flirty,” Murphy said. “From then onward, we talked 24/7.”
“It was all the cupcakes,” he said.
They had their first official date less than a month later, on Nov. 11, at Costa Covo Osteria in Beverly Hills. Dinner lasted nearly five hours that night.
“We were glued to each other,” Apa said. “We didn’t realize anyone else was there.”
And when Apa returned to Los Angeles the following month, Murphy said, “I stayed with him the entire week he was in town, and we never really separated again.”
By January 2022, they each had said “I love you.” It was a gradual exchange: After one visit, “he left the hotel, and I was crying,” Murphy recalled. “I said, ‘I more than like you,’ and he said, ‘I more than like you too.’ The next time we saw each other, I said, ‘I love you,’ and he said, ‘I love you, too.’”
Six months after they met, they moved in together. “I lived in a condo in L.A. He bought a place in the building, and I slowly moved upstairs,” she said.
[Click here to binge read this week’s featured couples.]
Murphy, 35, was born in New York City and raised in Tokyo, where her family had relocated for her father’s work in international litigation. She has a bachelor’s degree in psychology from U.C.L.A. and is a model with work that includes campaigns for Guess, Burberry London, and Uniqlo. Murphy was also on the cover of the December 2022 issue of Maxim.
Michael Albert Apa, 49, is the founder of Apa Aesthetic, an aesthetic dental practice with locations in New York, Los Angeles, Miami, and Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Apa practices one week of each month in each location, and Murphy travels with him, she said.
He holds a bachelor’s degree in biology from Le Moyne College and a Doctor of Dental Surgery from N.Y.U. College of Dentistry, where he established the first undergraduate aesthetics program and opened a dedicated clinical educational space bearing his name. He was born and raised in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. Previously married with two stepchildren, he was divorced in 2023.
The couple considers their apartment in Manhattan’s TriBeCa neighborhood to be their home base. They also own places in Miami Beach, Beverly Hills and Southampton, N.Y.
Apa proposed to Murphy on April 4, 2025. “I always knew I wanted to propose in our New York apartment,” he said. “I think it was appropriate to our relationship and who we are.”
“He knew I wouldn’t want to be sobbing in public,” Murphy said. “We were in the kitchen just talking and laughing, and he started saying really nice things to me. I thought we were just having a sweet, romantic moment.”
That’s when Apa popped the question to which Murphy immediately said yes.
On July 11, the couple married at their Hamptons home in an intimate ceremony attended by six friends, including Dr. Nicole Ruth, who had been ordained through American Marriage Ministries and officiated. “Now we’ll always have that memory in our home,” Murphy said.
The legal wedding followed their celebratory wedding in Italy at Villa Pliniana on Lake Como on June 20 with 75 guests.
“I secretly flew those same cupcakes to Italy for our last date before we got married,” Murphy said. “I told him it was the first big thing he ever did for me, and I wanted it to be the last big thing I did for him before we became husband and wife.”
The post A Fashion Model and Dentist, Brought Together by a Dozen Cupcakes appeared first on New York Times.
