Madeline Denise McCarthy and Matthew Thorn Smith made their acting debuts in 2000 in a TV ad promoting the Yogi Berra Museum & Learning Center at Montclair State University in Little Falls, N.J.
Both were in first grade.
Mr. Smith had run circles around an upright baseball bat with his forehead on its knob, and got so dizzy he toppled over in the video, while she pretended to spit tobacco in the adjacent field.
“We were a few feet away from each other in the dugout between shots,” Mr. Smith, 32, said, which they only realized in college.
They were among about a dozen local children in vintage uniforms improvising baseball-related moves for a series of ads, and last Thanksgiving watched a digitized version of the one they were in with their families.
The two, who grew up about a mile from each other in Montclair, N.J., went to different schools until both ended up at Montclair High School, where they met in 2007 as sophomores in gym class.
Their friend circles often overlapped — especially on her parents’ front porch during lunch or weekends, thanks mostly to their older siblings. “She had a party house,” Mr. Smith said.
Ms. McCarthy, who developed a crush on Mr. Smith, had a spirited debate over him senior year.
“I’m going to marry Matt Smith,” she told a friend, who also liked him. She recalled finding him “so cute, funny and sweet.”
In 2010, after they went off to college in New York — the School of Visual Arts for him; Marymount Manhattan for her — she enjoyed hanging out with him and their Montclair friends who were also in college in the city.
“I just liked Maddy,” he said. “She was easy to hang out with and was very funny and sassy.”
In spring 2011 they had their first kiss while crashing on the couch at a friend’s place in Philadelphia after a party, and then subsequently made out at parties here and there.
“I didn’t know what to make of it,” Ms. McCarthy said, but that Thanksgiving, the day after another party, their relationship became clear.
He invited her over to his house after their Thanksgiving meals to play Fishbowl, similar to Charades, with his family, and they soon began dating.
“She would ply me with frozen White Castle hamburgers,” he said with a laugh, when he moved to Stuyvesant Town in Manhattan sophomore year.
He graduated with a bachelor’s degree in photography and works remotely as a fine wine consultant for Sokolin Fine Wine Merchants. She graduated with a bachelor’s in sociology, and works remotely as an account manager at Atrium, a staffing agency in New York.
In spring 2015, when they lived a 10-minute walk from each other in Bushwick, Brooklyn, both worked at newly opened restaurants, now closed — she as a server at Mission Chinese Food on East Broadway in the Two Bridges area; and he busing tables and server’s assistant at Rebelle on the Bowery, where he worked his way up to expediter and wine intern, and began learning about wine.
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“I was enthralled,” he said, sampling all kinds of vintages ranging from an $800 bottle of 2000 E. Guigal Hermitage syrah to a more affordable 2013 Sawmill Creek Finger Lakes pinot noir.
As they spent more time with work friends, they drifted apart. By fall 2015 they broke up, but remained friends.
After Rebelle closed in 2017, he worked as set designer on photo shoots for about a year, and in July 2018 became a consultant at the Morrell Wine store in Rockefeller Center.
She had moved back home to Montclair in 2016, and he moved back with his parents two years later.
“Why am I searching for something right there in front in me?” Mr. Smith recalled thinking. “I knew her family. She knew my dog.”
In summer 2019, they got back together, and when Covid hit, they stayed in each other’s bubbles.
“We had dinners at each other’s houses,” she said. “Sometimes with both families.”
By spring 2021, they wanted a change of scenery, and rented a renovated schoolhouse in the Adirondack Mountains for three months. They then moved to the Finger Lakes where they now rent an apartment in Montour Falls.
While she worked remotely for the staffing agency, he got hands-on experience in winemaking at Hillick & Hobbs, a Finger Lakes, N.Y., vineyard on Seneca Lake.
“I know how to grow the grapes and squish them into wine,” he said.
In July 2022, he proposed at the end of the pier along Seneca Lake in Watkins Glen, N.Y., with his maternal great-grandmother’s ring.
On Aug. 3, Stephen Reddington, a maternal uncle of the bride, and her godfather, who became a Universal Life minister for the occasion, officiated before 170 guests in the barn at Gratitude & Grace, a wedding venue in Ithaca, N.Y.
“He’s so determined to create a vineyard,” said Ms. McCarthy, who wore a 1960s-inspired, ankle-length ivory silk gown by a local designer.
His dream: “Ten or 15 acres would be fantastic,” he said. “We’d grow grapes and apples for cider. Maybe have our own little wine brand, and champagne-style wines.”
