Anne Louise Sandefur wasn’t supposed to be in town on Christmas Eve 2022. She usually spent the holidays with her family in Florida, but that year decided at the last minute that she wanted to experience a Christmas in New York.
So she accompanied her friend, Lily Overmyer, to Grace Church in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village. Afterward, Ms. Overmyer introduced Ms. Sandefur to another friend, Thomas Taylor Seelye Evan, who goes by Tommy. He was attending the Episcopal service with his family.
“My first impression was that Tommy was cute and exudes warmth,” Ms. Sandefur said. “I had noticed him interact with others at the church earlier, and it was clear that he was loved.”
Mr. Evans said he “couldn’t stop admiring Anne across the pews during the service, and when I met her, she was kind and gentle and had the most mesmerizing eyes.” He added that he remembered “thinking how crazy it would be if I met my wife at church, of all places.”
Ms. Sandefur, 37, had little luck with dating since moving to New York almost a decade ago and wasn’t sure she would ever find the right partner. Mr. Evans, 35, had broken off a long-term relationship two years earlier and was confident he would find an ideal match one day. At the time, she was renting an apartment on the Upper West Side; he owned a unit in Greenwich Village, where the couple currently lives.
The two chatted, and before they left, Mr. Evans, emboldened by Ms. Overmyer’s obvious attempt to set them up, asked Ms. Sandefur for her phone number. He texted her a week later to invite her out. Their first date was in early January at Asset, a restaurant on the Upper West Side, where drinks turned into four hours of dinner and conversation.
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The post He Found His Wife in the Pews appeared first on New York Times.
