Christina Ellen Mastrocola and Samuel Walter Barcelo scaled an alternative universe on their first date in May 2019 while on his patio in Cambridge, Mass.
“I was on the third book and she was on the first of ‘The Stormlight Archive’,” Mr. Barcelo said of the fantasy series by Brandon Sanderson based in the Cosmere universe.
A couple of weeks earlier, Mr. Barcelo had swiped right when he came across Ms. Mastrocola’s profile on the Bumble dating app.
“She was cute, and kind of a little nerdy,” said Mr. Barcelo, who was feeling somewhat cagey about relationships after a fresh breakup.
Three days after joining the app, Ms. Mastrocola, who had gone through a breakup six months earlier, messaged him after noticing he loved books. (She tried the app only after her father gave her a pep talk about dating.)
Mr. Barcelo loves books so much that he sells rare books and antiquarian artifacts online as a hobby. Mr. Barcelo, now 39, who graduated with a bachelor’s degree in psychology and economics from Wesleyan, by day works remotely as a senior developer for revenue operations at Quorum Health in Brentwood, Tenn., which manages hospitals. He has an M.B.A. from Boston University.
“I thought he was cute of course,” said Ms. Mastrocola, 34, who graduated with a bachelor’s degree in business administration from St. Michael’s College in Colchester, Vt. She is a senior consultant in revenue operations focusing on health care remotely at Shift Paradigm, a marketing consultancy in Austin, Texas. She received an M.B.A. from Nyenrode Business University in Breukelen, the Netherlands.
Over the next few weeks, they texted intermittently as Mr. Barcelo finished a final project for his M.B.A.
“‘Hey what are you up to tomorrow,’” Ms. Mastrocola texted as soon he was free, and they met early the next evening in his building’s common garden.
They chatted there for hours over V. Sattui Vineyard’s cabernet sauvignon, and snacks, and bonded over books, mostly fantasy, briskly moving from “A Game of Thrones” to “The Stormlight Archive” series.
“I noticed how intently she listened,” Mr. Barcelo said. Before she took an Uber home to Medford, Mass., around midnight, he asked if he could kiss her.
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“I thought it was very sweet,” she said, and the next day they met for brunch at Puritan & Company in Cambridge where Mr. Barcelo raved about “Hardcore History,” a 20-hour podcast on World War I.
“This could have turned a lot of people off,’” he said.
But, not Ms. Mastrocola.
“This man is so smart and so talkative and loves history as much as I do,” she said.
They soon planned Monday evening movie nights, not limited to movies, usually at her place.
“She had the nicer couch,” he said, with a laugh.
In March 2020, when Covid hit, Mr. Barcelo planned to stay with his parents a couple of weeks in Watertown, Mass., which unexpectedly turned into nine months.
“We sneaked around like high school kids,” he said, for a few weeks as his parents quarantined.
One evening after Ms. Mastrocola drove up near his parents’ house to pick him up, his father, walking their Cairn terrier, knocked on the car window. After introductions, Ms. Mastrocola joined the family for dinner, and soon began spending a great deal of time with them.
“It was a unique, but amazing way to get to know my husband’s family,” she said.
In August 2020 the pair decided to take a trip to Newport, R.I., where they stayed at the Cliffside Inn overlooking the ocean.
“We had the whole town to ourselves,” he said.
Ms. Mastrocola fell in love with his parents’ tortoiseshell and calico cat Scooter, and in 2021 she adopted Zelda, a dilute calico, named for the Legend of Zelda video game that she and Mr. Barcelo often played. A month after she moved into his place in January 2022, they adopted another cat, a tabby named Neo.
In March 2024, after a Boston Symphony concert featuring Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, they drove to the Cliffside Inn in Newport. This time around, Mr. Barcelo got on one knee during a late night stroll on the moonlit cliff walk.
On May 3, Scott Barcelo, the groom’s father, ordained by American Marriage Ministries for the occasion, officiated on a breezy afternoon at Belle Mer, an events venue on Goat Island in Newport, before 220 guests, some of whom enjoyed a clambake at Fort Adams nearby the night before.
The reception featured deep blue and purple flowers including sweet peas and blue moon phlox and table numbers on old romantic-themed books. The couple did at least two dips and two lifts during their choreographed first dance to “Somewhere Out There” from the film “An American Tail.”
A line from the song was etched onto the gift she gave him after the wedding — a table top compass always pointing to their True North — Newport.
He then gave her a 1913 first edition of Robert Frost’s “A Boy’s Will,” with her favorite poem “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” handwritten by the poet just before the title page.
“We want to go out into the world and make things happen for each other and ourselves,” Mr. Barcelo said, in his own words, “with the promise at the end of the journey we will be together asleep in each other’s arms.”
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