They Met Analyzing Stories Like These

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They Met Analyzing Stories Like These

Kim Hoang Nguyen was intrigued when she stumbled across Todd William Schneider online. Not because Mr. Schneider, a Yale graduate, screamed marriage material, but rather because of the comprehensive data he collected on a subject she was interested in (according to which, Ivy League graduates were once heavily featured).

“I love your work,” Ms. Nguyen said in an email, referring to his search engine, weddingcrunchers.com.

She was trying to create a similar one to research wedding trends for a story pitch as a freelance writer, and wondered what compelled his work.

In 2013, Mr. Schneider built the search engine on a lark in two weeks, and scraped data from traditional wedding announcements featured in The New York Times from 1981 to 2020 — when traditional announcements became the more narrative Mini-Vows — and analyzed it in a wry, cynical way on his website. (The site is not affiliated with The Times.)

Among his takeaways: “There used to be

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cited; over the years there were fewer mentions of preppy boarding schools; and the words ‘hedge fund’ overtook ‘investment bank.’”

“I tracked words and phrases, college names, company names, ages,” said Mr. Schneider, 41, who graduated summa **** laude from Yale with a bachelor’s degree in applied mathematics and electrical engineering. He is a founder and the chief technology officer of Poppy Legal, a legal expense management platform start-up company.

Ms. Nguyen, 31, a data graphics journalist in a fellowship program at Business Insider, graduated with a bachelor’s degree in biology from the University of Waterloo in Ontario.

To his surprise, Mr. Schneider received numerous requests for interviews from publications and TV stations, as well as technical inquiries. “Certainly the most special was from Kim,” he said.

During a girls’ night out, Ms. Nguyen recalled a friend teased her about her tech wiz: “‘Wouldn’t it be funny if you started dating and you could publish your own wedding announcement?’”

Last January, after intermittent exchanges with him, sometimes months apart, she finally asked Mr. Schneider if he would like to meet for a drink.

He suggested coffee instead. “Lower stakes,” he explained.

On a Monday afternoon, while they were both between jobs and living in Brooklyn, they ended up talking shop on a sofa at Brew Memories in Park Slope. He had chamomile tea, and she had a matcha latte.

Once they discovered they both loved “The Simpsons,” they each effortlessly dropped a line or reference from the animated sitcom.

After about an hour and a half, they parted with a hug, not knowing if it had been an actual date.

Ms. Nguyen texted him later about meeting up again, and the next week they walked around the Brooklyn Botanic Garden until it closed. “It was very quiet, serene and dormant,” she said. They then sat on the steps outside the Brooklyn Museum, before warming up at a nearby bar.

As he drank a beer, and she a cider, he playfully grilled her about why she wanted to meet him: “What if I were weird? What if I were married?”

The tone grew more serious at dinner at Sushi Lin in Park Slope. She talked about her parents who came from Vietnam and settled in Canada, where she grew up in the greater Toronto area, and he told her about his father, who had died in 2015. Like them, he was a big fan of “The Simpsons.”

Later, they waited on the same subway platform — he en route to Williamsburg and she to Prospect Lefferts Gardens.

“I’m running out of time,” he said, as his train approached.

Her reply: “How would you like to say goodbye?”

He quickly said: “With a kiss.”

“This was definitely a date,” Ms. Nguyen said.

Two days later, they had a marathon date that included a trip to the Cloisters, an impromptu picnic in Fort Tryon Park, and dinner at Have & Meyer, in Williamsburg.

They soon began spending many days together.

[Click here to binge read this week’s featured couples.]

In February, she joined him on a trip to Washington to celebrate his friend’s birthday. When she mentioned her lease was up in mid-February, he told her she could stay with him whenever she was in New York, and not back in Canada with her family.

That spring she experienced her first Passover Seder at his mother’s house in Philadelphia.

In June, after they celebrated her birthday in Montreal, he met her parents and her Chihuahua, Milo, in Brampton, Ontario.

By fall, they began talking about marriage — this time their own.

By the end of the year, they had chosen a wedding date. In January, to make it official, he proposed in Fort Tryon Park.

On Jan. 22, the first anniversary of their first date, Wanyi Mai, a city clerk, officiated at the Manhattan Marriage Bureau before their immediate families and Milo, who now lives with them in Brooklyn.

The bride wore a white crepe skirt suit and the groom his one “serviceable” navy suit, and a new crisp white shirt from J. Crew.

They later celebrated at King restaurant with their families and, for dessert, enjoyed a ****** Forest mousse cake made for them by La Bicyclette Bakery, their favorite Williamsburg bakery.

“Do I analyze my wedding announcement?” Ms. Nguyen said, with a laugh, then realized something more. “To make sense of all the numbers and variables,” she said, “you need a story.”

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