It took Cheyenne Bailey Petitte and Clayton Francis Curran two first dates to lock in a relationship.
Their first one was in March 2023. Petitte, who had taken a yearlong dating hiatus after ending a long-term relationship, felt ready to open herself up to love again. She decided to give Hinge a try.
Not long after joining the app, Petitte received a rose — a feature used to show strong interest in someone’s profile — from Curran. “She just had such a cute aura about her,” he said, recalling that she was “always smiling and beaming and just looked so, so happy” in every photo.
Petitte was intimidated by the app, but felt at ease messaging Curran. They met up on a Tuesday after work at Kings Co Imperial, a cozy restaurant in Manhattan’s Lower East Side, splitting soup dumplings and pork fried rice.
“I think it was easily the brightest spark I ever felt with someone,” Curran said. That included having a similar sense of humor. “We both have a good sense of sarcasm and irony,” he said, “and we also love to beat a dead horse.”
They kept the night going at Black Crescent, a bar nearby, and had one last drink at another downtown bar before deciding to go home because both had work the next morning. On his train ride home to Jersey City, N.J., Curran was already planning their next date.
After their second date at Holywater, an oyster bar in Tribeca, Curran deleted Hinge. “I had been dating in New York for two years at the time and knew that there is an unfortunate trope of men being unwilling to show any sort of commitment in dating,” he said. He told Petitte he deleted the app and was focused on her, hoping to reassure her that he valued their connection.
“I knew that it might come on too strong,” Curran said, “but I also couldn’t help myself.”
For Petitte, he did come on too strong. She had just started dating again. It felt too much too soon, and she broke up with him, explaining that they were in different places.
But on subsequent dates, she found herself comparing others to Curran. “Nobody was better than Clay,” she said.
Curran was also thinking about her. “Six weeks passed by, and Cheyenne never left my mind,” he said.
In May 2023, Petitte posted an Instagram story at a Mets baseball game with two married friends. She captioned it, “Third wheeling.” Curran thought to himself, “There should be a fourth wheel.”
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He reached out, asking how she was doing and if she was interested in some “no-pressure drinks.” To his relief, she responded positively, and they set up their “second first date,” a picnic in Central Park.
Despite what he might have said, the pressure was very much high for Curran. He did not want to mess things up this time. He brought flowers, prosecco, charcuterie and fruit. The two have been locked in ever since.
In March 2025, Curran proposed on a catamaran in Saint Lucia while on vacation. “Right after we got engaged, a pod of dolphins showed up, swimming in front of the boat, jumping in the air, twirling in the draft of the catamaran for probably 20 minutes,” he said.
Curran, 33, who grew up in Middletown, Conn., is a policy officer for the European Union Delegation to the United Nations. He holds a bachelor’s degree in political science and French from Drew University and a master’s in international relations from N.Y.U.
Petitte, 34, is a senior digital strategy lead at Google and graduated from Florida Atlantic University with a bachelor’s degree in business marketing. She grew up in Tampa Bay, Fla.
On Oct. 25, a beautiful fall day in Central Park, the couple were married by Parker Huguley before 134 guests at a wooden gazebo under a canopy of trees. Huguley, the groom’s best friend, received a one-day officiant license from the City of New York for the occasion.
When the couple walked out of the gazebo atop a small hill off Central Park South, Curran dipped and kissed Petitte to a violin rendition of Drake’s “Best I Ever Had.” Afterward, the couple and their guests walked over to the Park Lane Hotel, where the reception took place.
The theme of the wedding was “Once Upon a Time in New York City.” The two put together a Playbill-inspired ceremony program and hired a poem writer and a violinist they had met in Central Park. For the after-party, Petitte dressed up as the Statue of Liberty.
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