Before they ever met in person, Jadejha Rene Edwards and Darian Charles Holt knew they had found their forever match.
“I claimed Darian was my husband the moment his picture popped up on my screen,” Ms. Edwards said. Mr. Holt also had the same reaction the moment he first saw her.
They first laid eyes on one another through screens because both were contestants on Season 7 of the Netflix show “The Circle,” which filmed in the fall of 2023. Participants live in the same building but communicate only through a social media app.
Throughout filming, Ms. Edwards explained, no one has access to a phone, television or the outside world. “You can only communicate through the game and only through the chat,” he said. “You can see photos but only what they provide. So, you’re trying to figure out who’s going to be real” because contestants can catfish using different photos.
The attraction was instant. “When I saw her profile picture,” Mr. Holt said, “I knew I was going to slide into her DMs and shoot my shot.” The two went on to communicate via direct messages.
Mr. Holt made it through three of the four weeks of taping before being “blocked,” as the show calls it. But that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. “Once I got blocked, I had the option to go see one person,” Mr. Holt said. His choice was obvious. “When I walked in and saw she was real, we shared a kiss,” he said. The cameras, of course, were still rolling.
Once the show aired, Mr. Holt recalled people saying, “‘Love is Blind’ has nothing on y’all,” though he added that “The Circle” isn’t a dating show.
Ms. Edwards wasn’t blocked until hours before the finale, after which everyone finally got to spend time together at a nearby hotel. Still without phones, they gathered one another’s numbers the old-fashioned way — via pen and paper.
The next day they all headed to the airport. That’s when the pair finally got their phones back and finally exchanged social media handles. Ms. Edwards returned home to Houston, and Mr. Holt to his home in Jackson, Miss.
But two weeks later, Mr. Holt traveled to Houston for the couple’s first date on Halloween weekend 2023. They had what Ms. Edwards called a “paint and sip” at her apartment in the city’s River Oaks neighborhood. She got them matching pajamas and the two drank wine, ate hibachi and painted pumpkins.
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And two weeks after that, he came back again to celebrate their birthdays — his is Nov. 10 and hers is Nov. 14. “He booked me a massage,” she said, “and one of his friends is a private chef so he did a private dinner for us.” They exchanged I love you’s that night, and, by January 2024, they were official.
“We ended filming in the fall, and I moved to Houston in January,” Mr. Holt said. Still, they had to keep their relationship under wraps on social media as the show had yet to air.
They bought a home together in April, but took their time moving in. “We wanted to wait until marriage before we moved in together,” Mr. Holt said, “so that after our wedding we will walk in to our house as a married couple.”
Ms. Edwards, 26, works remotely as a cybersecurity engineer for a private security company. She earned a bachelor’s degree in criminology from University of South Florida and was born in Florida and predominantly raised there.
Mr. Holt, 31, is an elementary school science teacher in the Houston Independent School District. Born and raised in Jackson, he has a bachelor’s in biology from Alcorn State University and a master’s degree in public health from Jackson State University.
In late December 2024, Mr. Holt took Ms. Edwards to dinner at Toca Madera, a Mexican Steakhouse in Houston. After dinner, he said he was taking her to a networking event.
Instead, he took her to a modern-industrial event space called the Nellie Rose #2 in downtown Houston that he had rented to propose. “I asked her privately while our friends waited in the bar across the street,” he said. After she said yes, their friends joined them to celebrate.
The two were wed on May 10 by Michael Bobo, who was ordained through the Supreme Council of the House of Jacob, with 215 guests in attendance, at Sans Souci Ballroom in Houston. The reception included a drum line. “My favorite part was when our drummers came out during the reception,” Mr. Holt said. “They turned our reception up to the next level.”
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