He performed a charades track three years later

Katie Dawn Schad and Adam Robert Purdy began a fun and flirty friendship a decade after they met in her dorm room during their first week at Wesleyan in 2009.

“I have an aunt and an uncle who live in Studio City,” Purdy said. as soon as Mrs. Schad mentioned that she was from that part of Los Angeles. “Have you ever been to Beeman Park?” She grew up in Montclair, New Jersey.

“Yeah, maybe,” he said, of the little neighborhood park. And that was that.

The two of them, like other freshman athletes, had arrived at Clark Hall early: he was an All-American goalie for the football team’s freshman year, and she was on the volleyball team and their captain their senior year.

“Our groups of friends clashed regularly,” Purdy said. Thus, they would often show up at the same frat and house parties, hang out at the Nest bar, or just sit around Foss Hill.

Although they never became close at school and dated other people, Mr. Purdy said that even then their “distinctive laugh and hilarity stood out.”

She and Purdy, both now 32, went their separate ways after graduating in 2013: him with a degree in psychology; her with one in psychology and science in society. After another year at Wesleyan, she also received a master’s degree in psychology.

In 2014, he was already living in Manhattan’s Alphabet City neighborhood when she moved to Crown Heights, Brooklyn, with her college boyfriend. Two years later, after she broke up with her, she began hanging out more with her other college friends, including Mr. Purdy, now director of marketing at the National Basketball Association in Manhattan.

They got to know each other better during the summer of 2017 when she and his close girlfriend, who also happened to be his close friend, joined him and 14 others at an East Hampton share house.

When Ms. Schad, a senior producer at 72andSunny, an ad agency in Dumbo, Brooklyn, moved into a NoLIta walk-up apartment in 2018, its rooftop quickly became a hotspot for parties and gatherings, a sort of college clubhouse. Mr. Purdy usually took it upon himself to be there.

“We got a little flirty,” she said. “I loved having Adam’s attention.”

In early summer 2019, she said she was delighted to see “her unfiltered goofy side” when nine college friends crammed into two rooms one weekend at Hartman’s Briney Breezes Beach Resort in Montauk, New York.

“When we woke up, Adam couldn’t find his glasses,” said Ms. Schad, who stayed with her girlfriend in the same room as Mr. Purdy and his roommate. “He couldn’t see anything. He was milking it to get laughs.”

Later that summer, after some of them returned to the same location in Montauk for Labor Day weekend, he said “the vibes changed.”

As she and Mr. Purdy chatted non-stop on the train back to town, he invited her to join him and her roommate that night for his Sunday night ritual, which was Chinese takeout from the restaurant. from Uncle Ted.

“I think I have feelings for Katie Schad,” she recalled telling her roommate after she left. Once she told her friends and family, her advice was to take it easy.

It doesn’t matter, at the beginning of October, he professed his feelings as they sat in a booth at Acme NYC, a NoHo saloon.

“Dude, it’s 2 in the morning,” he said. “Tell me tomorrow.”

After he did, they became inseparable.

(Click here to read this week’s featured couples.)

She then spent Thanksgiving with him and his family in Montclair. His father, Matt Purdy, is the managing editor of The New York Times. During a round of after-dinner charades, she jokingly wrote a clue on a piece of paper for Adam Purdy.

It read, “Marry me, Katie,” which she read, then quickly hid. She then put the sheet of paper in a plastic bag so the ink wouldn’t bleed.

When Covid hit in 2020, he packed a bag and stayed at his home in Greenwich Village. They banged on pots and pans at 7 p.m. to acknowledge healthcare workers, jogged down the West Side Highway and set out to watch Formula 1 races.

In June they moved to a larger apartment in Williamsburg near McCarren Park, and in February 2021 they adopted Max, a 15-year-old cat, from a friend who moved away.

In the fall of 2021, he told Ms. Shad, “I think we should get engaged in the first quarter of 2022.”

On February 25, 2022, she expected her cousins ​​(who were actually in Switzerland on vacation) to stop by before they all went out to dinner. As soon as the two of them went out to get some wine and cheese, a friend came over to set the scene.

When they returned, Mrs. Schad’s old charades track appeared in a frame surrounded by candles and rose petals on her coffee table, and Max her the cat put on a bow tie.

Mr. Purdy read a poem he wrote. He then knelt down and asked, “Will you marry me?”

On a rainy Saturday, May 20, Lauren M. Kurtz, the groom’s cousin who became Universal Life Church minister for the event, officiated before 175 guests, in a comfortable tent set up on a grassy and muddy hill in Crow’s Nest. restaurant, in Montauk.

“It felt like a big hug,” the girlfriend said of the intimate setting. Later, at the restaurant, they enjoyed smooth espresso martinis at dinner.