On the day Kevin James LaBuz married Molly Elizabeth Corbett, the groom’s mother made a toast that flowed like a river — the Susquehanna River, to be exact.
“Kevin grew up as a boy near the head of the Susquehanna River in upstate New York, and he married a girl from Baltimore, where the Susquehanna led into the Chesapeake Bay,” Erica LaBuz told guests during the wedding reception. The couple married June 20 at the home of the bride’s family in Baltimore. John Philip Miller, a retired judge on the Maryland Circuit Court for Baltimore, officiated.
Ms. Corbett, 34, and Mr. LaBuz, 35, met through mutual friends in October 2014.
At the time, both were living in Manhattan and decided to meet for a first date at a restaurant there.
“It was supposed to be a get-together for just a quick drink,” said Mr. LaBuz, the head of investor relations of 1stDibs, an online marketplace for luxury design in Manhattan. “It ended up being three hours, and I had a job interview the next day at 8 or 9 a.m.”
He did not get the job, but he did get a second date.
Ms. Corbett, who works in Manhattan as a communications director at Everytown for Gun Safety, an advocacy organization, said she arrived five minutes late, “because I didn’t want to be the first one there.”
Her plan fell apart when she walked into the restaurant and realized that Mr. LaBuz appeared to have the same plan.
“I’m usually pretty punctual,” Mr. LaBuz said, laughing.
When Mr. LaBuz finally appeared, Ms. Corbett could not help but notice him. “I felt that he was a person who was really easy to talk to,” said Ms. Corbett, who graduated from Colby College in Waterville, Maine. “He was really very personable, and he did a good job asking questions about myself, and he seemed to have a great deal of interest in showing me around New York.”
Mr. LaBuz, who graduated from Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh and had lived in New York for several years, enjoyed being a tour guide for Ms. Corbett, who was still relatively new to New York. He took her to many places she had never been, such as the Cloisters, Coney Island, and Sunset Park in Brooklyn.
“Although he wasn’t from New York, he carried himself like a New York native,” Ms. Corbett said. “That was my first impression of him.”
While Mr. LaBuz took Ms. Corbett on sightseeing adventures throughout four boroughs — “We never got around to Staten Island,” Ms. Corbett said — he was forming a few impressions of his own.
“She had a really dry, subtle sense of humor that I liked,” Mr. LaBuz said. “Sometimes you go on a date, and you have three or four cocktails, and there’s really nothing to say. But this was not one of those dates, because she was very easy to talk to.”
Six weeks after their first date, each of them were boarding a plane for trips that were planned before they met. Ms. Corbett was on her way to India with a friend, while Mr. LaBuz and a buddy were on their way to Vietnam and the Philippines.
“Before I left, he gave me a neck pillow and a few wall adapters for the plane ride,” said Ms. Corbett, laughing. “I remember calling my mom and asking, ‘What do you think about this gift?’ and she pointed out how practical it was.
“In the seven years since, I received a lot of practical, nonromantic gifts, like hiking boots, a personal finance book, stuff like that, but the neck pillow topped them all.”
They knew they liked each other, they both said, because all they did was think about each other while apart.
“I kept thinking about the next time I would see her again,” Mr. LaBuz said. “I thought about that more than anything else on that trip.”