They weren’t looking for anything serious. Surprise!

As Hugh Stephen Baran was on his way home in April 2015 to Manhattan’s Upper East Side after a Passover Seder with some high school friends in Englewood, NJ, Jacob Ellis Kaplan Rozenberg messaged him on Grindr, a dating app for gay men

The next day, he ran into Rozenberg at a bubble tea shop near his apartment, thinking it was “casual and low-risk.”

“I was in my first year of law school and I was getting my life back on track” after a breakup, said Mr. Baran, 35, who grew up in Paramus, New Jersey.

Mr. Rozenberg, 34, had arrived that January from Vancouver, British Columbia, and was living in a small servant’s quarters owned by his uncle on East End Avenue. (He washed the dishes in his bathtub.) “I made a 10-year plan,” said Rozenberg, who earned her hairdressing certificate at Vancouver Technical High School. “Move to New York, date a lot of people, and in your fifth year work in fashion and red carpet hairstyling. ”

He is now an editorial and celebrity stylist represented by Wall Group. His clients include Kate Hudson, Michelle Williams, Dove Cameron and Karlie Kloss.

Mr. Baran, who graduated with distinction in American studies from Yale before receiving a law degree from New York University, is now an attorney at Kakalec Law, a Brooklyn-based workers’ rights law firm.

“I was impressed that he wanted to go into labor law to help workers, and he didn’t do it for the money,” said Rozenberg, whose late mother, a social worker, had brought home the Jewish concept of “tikun olam.” ”, repairing the world.

After Mr. Rozenberg hugged him goodbye, Mr. Baran surprised him with a big kiss on the lips.

But when Mr. Rozenberg called the next day, Mr. Baran wanted to be clear: “I don’t want to waste your time,” he said. “I think you’re looking for something serious.”

Mr. Rozenberg insisted that it was not.

“It would be nice if they were just friends with benefits,” he said, and they began seeing each other casually a couple of times a week.

Three months later, that began to change when the Supreme Court legalized gay marriage nationwide and they watched an especially festive New York Pride March together in Greenwich Village.

As they stood on the sidelines, embracing, an older gay man walking past them yelled, “You two should get married.”

“We both laughed,” Baran said, but it got them thinking, and the next month they agreed they were dating.

In August, Mr. Baran moved to Prospect Heights, Brooklyn, and after late-night Manhattan hairdressing gigs and an hour and a half of walking on the subway, Mr. Rozenberg lugged around his 50-pound hairdressing kit: blow dryer of hair. , brushes, curling irons, scissors and all the color he was painting, he climbed four flights of stairs to spend the night.

In April 2019, they hosted both Seders and read a social justice-themed queer Haggadah prepared by Mr. Baran. They also made everything from scratch, including the gefilte fish, horseradish with beets, and matzah ball soup.

During the pandemic, Mr. Baran began baking challah each week and they would gather with the family for weekly Zoom Shabbats.

In January 2021 they flew to California to stay with Mr. Rozenberg’s sister, who underwent surgery after being diagnosed with the BRCA gene for breast cancer.

“It was a real moment of clarity of how deeply we care for each other and for each other’s families,” Mr. Baran said.

In August 2021, they proposed to her during a trip to Italy.

“I want to walk through this world with you shoulder to shoulder,” said Baran, who knelt under a full moon at Palazzolo Acreide in Sicily.

“Could you repeat that?” Rozenberg said, a little annoyed that Baran had beaten him to the proposal. He then knelt later that week on the Ponte Chiodo, a pedestrian bridge in Venice, where he was working on a Dolce & Gabbana fashion show.

On June 4, Kohenet Yael Tischler, a friend of the couple, who received a one-day officiating certificate from the New York City Clerk’s office, led a Jewish ceremony, through a queer lens, before 204 guests. at 99 Scott Studio, an event space in Bushwick, Brooklyn.

The bride and groom walked down the aisle to a keyboard version of the TV theme song “The Golden Girls” and Enzo, their 11-month-old merle goldendoodle, was their ring bearer.

“I found the one my soul loves,” they recited together during the Song of Songs ceremony, then each stomped on their own glass as the sound of house music wafted from a club next door.

“It’s very appropriate for us,” Mr. Rozenberg said. “It was like we were in a gay club during the ceremony.”

Later, the bride and groom were lifted up in chairs for a half-hour long “epic hour.”

“It was kind of scary and fun and lighthearted,” Rozenberg said.