In June 2018, a mutual friend invited Jennifer Wilder and Brandon Perlman to a party at the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in Manhattan with the intention of setting them up. Though they had never met before, Ms. Wilder and Mr. Perlman had a lot in common, the friend told her.
Both had graduated from George Washington University — Mr. Perlman in 2004 and Ms. Wilder in 2005 — and had since been living in New York. Both had also spent time working in the same building at the same company, American Express Publishing in Manhattan, where Mr. Perlman was the digital editor of Departures.com and Ms. Wilder worked as a digital marketing manager.
“I decided to attend that party with a few friends and zero expectations,” said Mr. Perlman, 40, who is now the chief executive at Social Studies, Inc., an agency he started that specializes in social media analytics and influencer marketing, and has offices in New York and Los Angeles.
Ms. Wilder, who is now the head of media at Parsley Health, a medical practice in New York and Los Angeles that also provides telemedicine services nationwide, arrived at the party with a similar mind-set. In 2018, her first marriage of about seven years ended in divorce, and she was looking to return to living as a single woman in New York City.
When he got there, Mr. Perlman said he noticed Ms. Wilder “immediately across the museum’s outdoor lawn,” in part thanks to her “contagious laugh you could hear two city blocks away.”
The two later chatted while in line to get drinks. By the end of the night, they had exchanged numbers. In the following weeks, they kept in touch while each traveled in Europe. She sent pictures of her trip to Berlin; he shared snaps of meals he ate while in Portofino, Italy, for a friend’s wedding.
“I felt strangely connected to this person, but I had no idea why,” said Ms. Wilder, 38.
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That August, after each had returned to New York, they met for omakase at Shuko in Union Square.
“It was like we were old friends,” said Mr. Perlman, who grew up in St. Louis, Mo., and Atlanta, Ga.
Ms. Wilder, from Framingham, Mass., said she “felt very much at ease” that night, too. “Dinner lasted several hours with no awkward pauses.” When they closed down the sushi counter and Mr. Perlman gave her an unexpected kiss good night, she recalled, “I left feeling intrigued.”
They met again one week later, this time to explore the city, and before long were being introduced to each other’s friends and bonding over a shared sense of humor and passion for travel. “There was an instantaneous connection that was electric; one that could not be ignored,” Mr. Perlman said.
By the end of 2018, the two had moved into an apartment in Manhattan’s West Village together. From then, their life as a couple held steady until the pandemic, when they began to do a lot of “bouncing,” as Mr. Perlman put it.
In early 2020, they spent three months living with his parents in the suburbs of Cleveland, before moving to Aspen that June. It was there that Mr. Perlman proposed to Ms. Wilder, at the top of Aspen Mountain, on June 21, 2020, exactly two years to the day of their first encounter at the Cooper Hewitt. The following year, in October, they moved to Los Angeles, where they currently live.
The couple were married on Feb. 12 at the Henry Morrison Flagler Museum in Palm Beach, Fla. Rabbi Barry Silver of the Congregation L’Dor Va-Dor officiated before 140 vaccinated guests.
“It was truly a whirlwind,” said Mr. Perlman, reflecting on all the changes the newlyweds navigated in the past couple of years. Managing everything, he added, was made easier because “we are most definitely on the same wavelength.”
