It’s second nature for Kara Ann Loewentheil to get her feelings out in the open and deal with them. Matthew Scott Eubank, who called her “a Jedi of emotion,” found the idea terrifying at first, but then began “to trust the system.”
“It was like a magic trick,” said Mr. Eubank, 54, who grew up in Minneapolis and met Ms. Loewentheil on the dating app OkCupid in March 2021.
Ms. Loewentheil, 43, is a master certified life coach who grew up in Baltimore. She hosts a weekly podcast for women who struggle with anxiety, self-doubt, and impostor syndrome and owns a feminist coaching company. Her book, “Take Back Your Brain,” was published in May and made several best-seller lists.
Until 2016, Ms. Loewentheil, who received a law degree cum laude from Harvard, was a women’s rights lawyer. She graduated cum laude in English language and literature from Yale, where she was also a fellow in the Study of Reproductive Justice program at Yale Law School.
“His profile was very well written,” she said, which made up for his unflattering photos (Ms. Loewentheil described him as having a “severe expression” and “a bad haircut with his hair combed down over his forehead”).
Mr. Eubank, whose previous marriage ended in divorce, retired as an assistant attorney general for the State of New York in the Brooklyn regional office. He has a bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of Washington and a law degree from Brooklyn Law School.
During a Zoom date on March 19, 2021, she suggested meeting at the Harlem Meer lake at the north end of Central Park, near her apartment in Morningside Heights. He seemed game, but after she texted to set it up, it took him three days to reply.
“My phone makes noises all the time,” he told her. “I ignore them.” (He eventually set up a special tone for her, which he agreed to answer).
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The next Friday, after work, they walked around the Harlem Meer. An hour later, Mr. Eubank told her he had to leave since he needed to get ready to pick up his two children the next day. (He was newly separated at the time, and his divorce was finalized in June.)
“I knew there was something there,” she said, but it felt like a brushoff. “I had this heavy sinking feeling.”
But during an hourlong subway ride home to Brooklyn’s South Slope, he texted her. “I guess you could tell I was crazy about you,” he said.
The text got him a second date.
The next Friday, they went to Tartina, an Italian restaurant a block from her apartment, and later they spoke over cans of Spindrift sparkling water on her terrace. Before he left, they had a first kiss.
A week later, their date — dinner at a Vietnamese restaurant near his place where they later hung out — did not go as smoothly. “We had planned to spend the night at Matthew’s apartment,” she said, “but it felt awkward and I went home early.”
However, the same night, he texted her saying they were “really good together.”
“I’m a sucker for epistolary romance,” she said.
They began seeing each other regularly, and after five months they went for couples therapy.
“I’m in the mental health field, but I don’t have all the answers,” said Ms. Loewentheil, who never planned to have children or be with someone who had children.
In October 2021, he took a train up to Hudson, N.Y., where she was working on a book proposal at the Maker Hotel, and then they drove to Quebec, the first of many “relationship summit” road trips to upstate New York or Canada.
In January 2022, she met his children, Thom, now 8, and Ada, 10, on a trip to the American Museum of Natural History.
“It felt more natural than I thought,” she said, and two months later she moved a block from his place in South Slope.
A year later, in February 2023, they moved into an apartment together in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, where the children stayed half the week.
They soon discussed marriage and decided to book a wedding venue, as well as a villa in Tuscany, Italy, for a group honeymoon.
In August 2023, after some discussion, they headed to the Harlem Meer, where he proposed under a weeping willow tree. A couple of weeks later she reciprocated with a peep show ring, including a boudoir photo of herself.
On July 5, Elizabeth Kranz-Potts, a friend of the couple who became a Universal Life minister for the occasion, officiated. Rabbi Irvin Ungar, formerly of Temple Sinai in Forest Hills, N.Y., led the Jewish portion of the ceremony before 130 guests, including her 97-year-old paternal grandmother, at the Wythe Hotel in Brooklyn.
The pair — she in a raspberry silk chiffon gown and he in a jacket with tropical flowers and pink pants — sashayed down the aisle to “You Can’t Hurry Love,” by the Supremes, played by the Bailsmen, a local gypsy jazz and hot swing band.
At the reception, guests did a vigorous hora and two typewriter poets from Ars Poetica wrote on-the-spot love poems.
Later, one poet stayed on to craft erotic poems at a racy after-party, featuring a five-act burlesque show, including “Fifty Shades of Oy Vey” performed by Fancy Feast.
“Authentic and festive were the two things we were looking for,” Mr. Eubank said, to which Ms. Loewentheil added, “and connection between people.”
