Henry Fogler Stevenson loathes social media. He hasn’t had a social media presence since he deleted his Facebook account over a decade ago. Nadya Teresa Okamoto documents her life on it, posting several videos a day on Instagram and TikTok, where she has over four million followers.
But for Stevenson, the fact that he was so drawn to Okamoto despite their differences made him certain that what they had between them was really meaningful.
“Nadya and I are very different,” he said. “And yet I was so in love with her.” The contrast, he said, “strengthens our bond, because we love each other despite it.”
The two met in November 2019 in Los Angeles at an after-party for Summit, an entrepreneurial conference both were attending. Stevenson, who was working for a solar development start-up and living in Mexico City, sneaked into the party at the Ace Hotel in Downtown Los Angeles.
He saw Okamoto, who was wearing a mini silky black dress with red lips printed on it, dancing with her friends. After observing her group for 15 minutes to make sure she was single, he tapped her on the shoulder and asked if he could buy her a drink — despite the party being open bar. “I thought he was dorky funny,” Okamoto said.
They talked for hours, and all interest in the music dissipated. Stevenson walked her over to the JW Marriott, where she was staying, and they sneaked up to the rooftop bar, which was closed, and talked for a few more hours.
Stevenson, 33, grew up in Geneva with three siblings. He graduated with a bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of St. Gallen in St. Gallen, Switzerland.
Okamoto, 28, grew up with two siblings in Manhattan until age 10, then moved to Portland, Ore. She graduated with a bachelor’s degree in sociology from Harvard.
On the rooftop, they spoke about their families and the career transitions both were in the midst of. Okamoto was a junior at Harvard who ran business ventures outside school; at the time, she was between projects and hungry to figure out what was next.
For about six years, she’d been running a nonprofit group called period.org that provides menstrual products to people in need, and was in the process of replacing herself with a new executive director. Stevenson had recently left an investment banking job to work for the solar development start-up.
As Stevenson was trying to get to know her, he noticed that she talked mainly about her work: her book, called “Period Power: A Manifesto for the Menstrual Movement,” her nonprofit group and her new business idea. Stevenson said he prodded as he wondered, “Who is the Nadya behind all that?”
Okamoto was stumped by his questions. “I was like, ‘I don’t know, that is who I am. I am what I do.’”
She added, “I was at a point in my own life where I really only thought of my self-worth tied to my work.” She said she put a lot of pressure on herself.
“I think that is where the conversation kind of got a lot deeper,” Stevenson said. “I was more curious about who Nadya was as a human, and that’s not really how Nadya thinks. And we talked about that for a long time,” he said. He was fascinated by this “beautiful person beneath a veneer of invincibility.”
They kissed good night and met up for lunch and dinner the following day before she caught a flight to New York, where she was accepting a Glamour Women of the Year award. She was proud and showed off a bit when she sent him photos from a red carpet, “and he just did not care” about the glitz, she said. “I feel like when men had hit on me before, they were super into my career,” she said.
Later that month, Okamoto traveled to Cancun for a work trip that had been planned before they met, and Stevenson joined her there for three days.
“I wanted to show her that I knew how to surf,” Stevenson said. But he smashed the surfboard into his eye and bled profusely. “And then I tried to be all cute and go out swimming and have a sexy moment getting out of the water,” she said. But she was pummeled by the waves and sucked out by a riptide.
Despite the embarrassing moments, it was there that he fell in love. And during a weekend in New York in December 2019, they made it official. The following month, in January 2020, she drunkenly told him she loved him and hung up right away. But there was truth behind it.
“I was very much in my toxic girl boss era of like: I’m just so focused on work and stuff,” Okamoto said. But, she added, “When you’re in love, it’s all consuming.” He was a “lover boy” who supported her while encouraging her to sleep more, work less, get off her phone and work out. By being with him, she said, she started learning to detach her self worth from professional accolades and decenter herself from her career and social media presence.
When Covid-19 lockdowns were set, Okamoto texted her “gay dads,” or “GADs,” as she calls them — her mother’s best friends who helped raise her. They live in Portland, Ore., and she asked if she and the guy she started seeing could stay with them. They said yes.
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They spent three months in Portland. Okamoto’s mother and sisters, Issa Okamoto and Ameya Okamoto, lived close by, and the couple saw them often. “My youngest sister really hazed Henry and made him do all her chores but bonded quickly,” Okamoto said. It was during this time that she worked on raising pre-seed funding for her new company, August, which sells period care products.
In June 2020, the two went to Woodstock, Vt., where Okamoto’s co-founder had a house. She worked on building the company there.
But that month she hit her mental health rock bottom and had a “breakdown” — “I think just from working since I was 16, like never really sleeping or taking a break,” she said.
In June, she checked into a residential rehab facility in Los Angeles, with the encouragement of Stevenson and her family. She tried several times to break up with him. “I was like, I’m a mess, I’m depressed,” she said. “Go save yourself. Go be with someone easier.” She was diagnosed that July with borderline personality disorder, a condition characterized by volatile relationships and emotions.
“I remember just feeling like, ‘Oh my God, Henry did not sign up for this.’”
But her diagnosis wasn’t going to deter him. He researched how to support individuals with B.P.D. and encouraged her while getting treatment.
For two months, Okamoto was not allowed to work, and she reflected on what she really wanted in her life. It was a rigorous healing journey, she said, and she learned: “As much as I have this professional dream, I also have this dream of building a family and having a partnership. And Henry’s my person.”
In January 2021, they moved to New York City after Stevenson got a job there. He is currently an infrastructure private equity investor at IFM Investors. Okamoto recently stepped away from August in an operating role and is now a founder and chief marketing officer of Pie, a social networking app.
The pair now live in the Fort Greene neighborhood of Brooklyn with their dog, Mimi. Both her sisters are full-time TikTokers who live across the street from them. “And so we do a lot of content in the house — it’s a big part of our lives,” she said. “We basically just hang out as an extended family altogether,” he said.
Content creation has grown on Stevenson — especially when they were getting brand deals that saved them a lot of money. The couple bought an abandoned, damaged house in the Hudson Valley in 2024 and renovated it together. It was a two-year endeavor.
“If the brand deal or the content is for something that he’s interested in,” she said, “Henry would put a mic on and do it.”
In February 2025, he proposed on a hike near that home. And then, to fulfill her dream of a public, Instagrammable proposal, he proposed at Inness, a hotel in Accord, N.Y., with lots of flowers, friends and family members present. “She got her moment. I got my moment. It was a good compromise,” he said.
On June 20, the couple married on La Luna Farm in New Paltz, N.Y., which is owned by Stevenson’s paternal aunt and uncle, with a view of the Shawangunk Mountains. Mark Holloway, one of her GADs, officiated in front of 160 guests. He was previously ordained by the Universal Life Church. Her other GAD, David Kahl, walked her down the aisle.
“I had sworn off dating,” Stevenson said. “It was just kind of exhausting. I wasn’t meeting the right person. And so I kind of just stopped looking. And that’s when I met Nadya.”
“Despite our differences,” he continued, “there was not a part of my body that was nervous. There was no part of me that didn’t want to commit to her.”
On This Day
When June 20, 2026
Where La Luna Farm, New Paltz, N.Y.
Gospel Okamoto dreamed of having a gospel choir at her wedding since she was young. “I realized it’s because one of my favorite rom-coms growing up was ‘Love Actually.’ And I love the wedding scene,” she said, when a gospel choir surprised a couple at the altar. For Stevenson’s entrance, the Late Show’s Gospel Choir sang “Stand By Me” by Ben E. King. For Okamoto’s, they sang “I’ll Be There” by the Jackson Five.
Wedding Donkeys Okamoto vlogged the whole wedding live, which included her dress reveal, their first dance and photos of two donkeys on the farm that were adorned with flowers. “They are actually a mother and daughter duo,” Okamoto said. “Given the mama’s age, they weren’t roaming around but were out being happily fed carrots by guests.”
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