The day after her second date with Adam Ryan Zack, on Dec. 20, 2022, Sara Katherine Runnels, a comedic writer, took to Twitter, writing, “My date last night bought a New Yorker subscription in the middle of our date so he could read all my articles later. Is this my husband now?”
The Tweet went viral, with 11.3 million views to date. And Josh Mankiewicz, a reporter on NBC’s “Dateline,” retweeted, commenting, “Yes. Or your murderer.”
Mr. Mankiewicz became aware of Ms. Runnels, known for articles and social media posts about the “single girl life,” when a friend sent him one of her tweets from May 20, 2022, which read: “You want me to get a husband??? The thing that killed everyone on Dateline???”
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Ms. Runnels, 40, matched with Mr. Zack, 39, on Hinge on Dec. 8, 2022, just 19 days after losing her mother, Patricia Walker, to late-stage lung cancer. “After she passed in November 2022, I vowed to start dating a little differently,” Ms. Runnels said. For her, this meant dating more seriously.
The two went on their first date two days later for drinks at the Fairmont Olympic Hotel in Seattle. “I suggested coffee, she suggested drinks,” Mr. Zack said. They both said the evening felt easy and natural. “It wasn’t fireworks galore,” Ms. Runnels said. “But fireworks are not always a good thing. Sometimes things catch on fire.”
A second date took place roughly a week later, on Dec. 19, in Seattle’s Belltown area at Rob Roy, a bar that had a Christmas pop-up theme. “We drank out of cups shaped like Santa’s lower half,” Ms. Runnels said.
That second date “was my first introduction to the fact that things are different with Sara,” Mr. Zack said, noting how Ms. Runnels had a large following of readers and on social media.
“We have to get married now, or the world will revolt,” Mr. Runnels joked with him as her posts about their dating went viral. “That’s a lot for a second date,” Mr. Zack said. They went on to spend New Year’s Eve together.
A month and a half later, they traveled to see Mr. Zack’s mother, Claudia Tanis, in Tacoma, Wash., whom Ms. Runnels had previously met at a casual family dinner. On their drive, they chatted about their upcoming Hawaii flights with Alaska Airlines, where Ms. Runnels worked as a senior copywriter.
“We decided since we were travel partners already, a term Alaska Air calls guests of employees, we should be boyfriend/girlfriend, too,” Ms. Runnels said. They made their relationship official before they arrived at Ms. Tanis’s home.
In October 2023, the couple bought a townhouse together in Seattle’s Ballard neighborhood, where they currently live.
Mr. Zack proposed on March 22, 2024. He had booked a flight on a Kenmore Air seaplane to take them to Roche Harbor, Wash., for the weekend. “Kenmore Air seaplanes are very iconic,” Mr. Zack said. “We live in the path of the seaplanes, so we get to see them every day.”
Just before their flight, the two walked around Seattle’s Lake Union, and Mr. Zack proposed with an emerald-cut diamond ring. Ms. Runnels said yes. “People say, ‘Were you surprised?’ and I was like, we bought a townhouse together,” Ms. Runnels said jokingly.
Ms. Runnels, who was raised in Houston, Texas, is a regular humor contributor to The New Yorker. Her writing has also been featured in other publications, including Elle magazine. She has a bachelor’s degree in English from Texas A&M University.
Mr. Zack, who was raised in Puyallup, Wash., is a senior city planner for Mercer Island. He has a bachelor’s degree in planning, public policy, and management from the University of Oregon.
The couple were wed Oct. 12 at the Edgewater Hotel in Seattle, with 100 guests in attendance. Mr. Mankiewicz, ordained for the occasion by Universal Life Church, officiated. “Out of the blue, she just asked me if I would perform her wedding,” Mr. Mankiewicz said.
“I thought asking Josh to be our officiant would be so fun,” Ms. Runnels said. “And I love that he said yes.”
“There’s an obvious joke here about ‘Dateline’ being at the beginning of a marriage when we’re usually there at the end,” Mr. Mankiewicz said. “But that’s one I’m not going to make because the marriages we cover don’t work out, and there’s nothing funny about that.”
The couple honored Ms. Runnels’s mother in a number of ways on the wedding day, including tossing some of her mother’s ashes over the balcony of their suite the morning of the wedding. “She loved the water so much,” Ms. Runnels said. The hotel sits at the edge of Elliott Bay, which is part of Puget Sound.
One of Ms. Runnel’s viral single-girl tweets was printed on each of the place cards for the reception. “It’s a seating/tweeting chart,” Ms. Runnels said. “They are the most tasteful ones because we don’t want Grandma Lucy to see anything scandalous. It’s a memorial to my single girl era.”
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