“The conversation just flowed,” Ms. Meltz said. “I’ve been out with so many men who wanted to brag about what they owned, where they’d been skiing, and he did none of that. He genuinely cared about hearing about me.”
A second date soon followed, and within a few months, Ms. Meltz realized that she regretted the holiday trip to Argentina that she and a friend had planned because it would mean that she wouldn’t be with Mr. Strauss over the holidays. “That’s when I decided I really don’t want to live without this guy.”
“It feels so comfortable, so easy, so natural, that it was just a feeling of ‘we belong together,’” Mr. Strauss said. “Every day — it’s just spontaneous — we say to to each other, ‘I love you.’”
Last year, for Ms. Meltz’s birthday, Mr. Strauss planned a proposal at the Leopard at des Artistes that culminated with prosecco for every one of the restaurant’s guests. “It was such a Woody Allen moment, so beautiful, and all these people were so happy for us,” Ms. Meltz said.
On July 12, the couple were married at the Harrison, N.Y., home of Mrs. Flaxman and her husband, Stephen Flaxman. Steven J. Usdan, a Universal Life minister, officiated remotely, using a video link, and Rabbi Stephen H. Pinsky, who also joined the wedding through a video link, led the ceremony. About 200 other people participated on Zoom.
The wonder of their unanticipated introduction is still with both, four years later. “I was just very, very fortunate — it so easily could not have happened,” Mr. Strauss said. “It’s pretty magical.”
“Had Susan not set me up with him, I would have never met him,” said Ms. Meltz, who will use Meltz Strauss as her surname. “There’s a Yiddish word, ‘bashert.’ It was meant to be.”