Jacquelyn Nicole Silverman and Benjamin Bertrand Glasser didn’t know before they met in March 2015 whether what happened between them in Las Vegas would stay in Las Vegas. But they both hoped not.
The two, who were in college at the time, had agreed to be each other’s date for the annual blowout formal put on by Glasser’s fraternity, Alpha Epsilon Pi.
“I got a call from a girlfriend at U.S.C. asking if I would come be her wing woman for this weekend in Vegas,” Silverman said. “She was like, ‘I’m going with all these boys, and I don’t know anyone. I’ll find you a date and set you up.’”
Getting there required both to cross state borders: Silverman was a sophomore at the University of Arizona; Glasser, a junior at the University of Southern California.
Three days after they introduced themselves during check-in at the MGM Grand hotel, each returned to campus with the feeling that fate may have road tripped with them to the land of slot machines and quickie weddings.
“It didn’t feel like meeting somebody new,” he said. “It felt like every cell in my body was saying, ‘I have known this person for lifetimes.’”
Glasser, 32, grew up in Irvine, Calif., with an older sister, Sasha. His parents are Robin Preiss Glasser and Selwyn Glasser; his stepfather is Bob Berman. He works as an experience designer at Adobe.
Silverman, 31, grew up in Scottsdale, Ariz., the only child of Nancy and Russell Silverman. She is a lead creative marketing producer for Amazon MGM Studios.
For months after their March 2015 weekend, both Silverman and Glasser played it cool, communicating through the occasional text while each worked toward the bachelor’s degrees they eventually earned — hers in journalism; his in cognitive science. Then, that summer, Glasser had a birthday.
“Me and my friend group wanted to celebrate our collective 21st birthdays,” he said. Once they decided Las Vegas was the spot for their August party, he reached out to Silverman.
“I hit up Jacquelyn again,” he said. “And the weekend was equally fantastic.” Silverman was beginning to feel like Glasser’s good luck charm: He won enough money at the craps table their first night to upgrade their room to a penthouse suite. “It just felt like the gods were pushing us along, like, ‘You guys are gonna have a good time.’”
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Still, “every time we’d see each other, it was cosmic and electric and amazing, but then it’d be like, ‘OK, I’m gonna go back to my life in Arizona now, and I’m gonna go back to my life in L.A.,’” he said. “We treated it like, maybe I’ll see you again, maybe I won’t.”
After a few more meet-ups during college, six years passed before they were in the same room together. Silverman had moved to Los Angeles in 2017 to take a job in publicity at Fox Searchlight Pictures. Glasser, then a guitarist, was still living in Los Angeles but touring with bands, including one he put together with the electronic artist Justin Jay.
“As soon as I moved to L.A., I was thinking, all right, finally this is the time,” Silverman said. Lady luck was slower to greet them, though. Both were in and out of romantic entanglements with others until June 2023, when they ran into each other at the restaurant Bacetti in Echo Park.
A few minutes of catching up led to the discovery that they were headed to the same party that night. “The connection we felt back in 2015 came flooding back to us,” Silverman said.
Both were living in Silver Lake that July when Silverman, who had left the June party with an invitation to text Glasser if she felt like hanging out sometime, took him up on the offer. “She texted, ‘Testing, testing. Does this number still work?’” Glasser said. “It was the same number she had since 2015.” Days later, they went to a gallery opening that led to a warehouse party.
“I said, ‘I’ve talked about you with my mom since we met,’” Glasser said. “‘I’ve never been able to stop thinking about you.’” The next morning, over açaí bowls, they talked about marriage. “Not like, ‘Are you going to marry me?’ More like, ‘What are your thoughts on marriage?’”
In March 2025, a decade after they first met in Las Vegas, Glasser proposed. Three months later, they found an apartment to move into together in Silver Lake.
In September, Glasser had officiated his sister’s wedding at their mother’s house in San Juan Capistrano, Calif. On Oct. 10, Ms. Preiss Glasser, the illustrator of the children’s book series “Fancy Nancy,” helped set the scene for a second backyard wedding.
Josh Taylor, a friend of the couple who was ordained by the American Marriage Ministries for the occasion, officiated before 70 guests.
A D.J. had a song cued up for the moment they smashed a glass to mark the start of their married life: “Viva Las Vegas.”
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