Our Story
Our love story started with a lie…
As Steve considered if he should finally sign up for Yoga Teacher Training, he asked the yoga studio if there would be other men signed up. They had cheerfully replied, “Yes, of course! There’ll be multiple other men!”
Fast forward to September 2021: Steve arrived for the first day of a four-month training… to a room full of only women! (poor steve!)
Both of us had entered yoga teacher training thinking we were going on a solemn, celibate, monk-like journey. And like all good love stories, when you aren’t looking for love, it tends to arrive and hit you in the face - or…arrives on the yoga mat next to yours? You get it.
Fast forward, we graduated and interned together at the studio - Nadia had just finished teaching a class, and everyone else bailed on post-class drinks… except Steve. Over beers, she suddenly realized that this was definitely a date.
Panicking, her opening line was: “So… do you bike?” (Nadia does like to bike, but not enough for these to be the first words out of her mouth. Steve good-naturedly replied that he thought he might have an indoor bike stored in the basement somewhere…)
And like all good first dates, that awkward opener led to a steamy makeout outside the brewery.
A trip to Mexico in spring 2022 sealed the deal.
We’d gone to Todos Santos with a few yoga friends, and one afternoon the two of us slipped away in search of a fishing beach where we’d heard you could buy fresh fish straight from the fishermen. We ended up deciding to mark that day as our dating anniversary, the first of what would become many big adventures together.
We nicknamed it “Pelican Day,” in honor of using our half-baked Spanish to navigate the unforgettable moment of buying dinner straight off a boat, surrounded by what felt like a million pelicans. We didn’t know then that it would become our anniversary, but we celebrated anyway, with espresso martinis at a nearby hotel, which kindly kept our catch on ice while we toasted.
Our love really took shape from this shared passion of cultivating novel, intimate, intentional and ‘type 2 fun’ experiences for each other and our community. Those looked like rafting trips down the Colorado River, BIG backpacking loops, themed spelling bees or wine-tasting passover seders. A little all over the place, always a good time.
Part of these adventures took place at Devil’s Thumb Ranch, where our wedding will be, and where Steve took his first official yoga teaching job (and would drive the 90 minutes up and over Berthoud pass every Thursday at 5am, rain, snow, or shine…insane!). Recently, we realized we actually taught yoga there together on our (future) wedding date (September 26, 2023)!
We are so excited to host you in this magical place where time slows down to Tova-speed & we can truly focus on what matters: our people and this one beautiful life we get together.
And that summer, Steve knew Nadia was the one when he realized she’ll put up with just about any of his random side quests…like the one time he bought a “lemon” camper van that only lasted one trip.
“Betty” (the van) dramatically died 4 times on their journey to the Sand Dunes, resulting in us leaving the van 3 hours from home at a repair shop straight out of a 70s magazine. One rental car, a trip to a monastery and a few (16) breakdowns on the side of a mountain pass later, Betty was then offered in sacrifice for this budding relationship.
Of course, we’ve done a lot to prepare for this day that has nothing to do with the wedding itself.
Nadia comes from an Italian/Polish (christian) mother and a Lebanese refugee (muslim) father. A central part of Nadia’s identity is her middle eastern heritage, but with two dominant Abrahamic religions in her family, a few years attending a Jewish high school, and majoring in Religion in college, you could say she was very open to meeting a nice Jewish boy.
And if you’ve ever met Steve, you know that he’s like Adam Brody in the Netflix show “Nobody Wants This”. He sees experiencing and building Jewish community as a core pillar of his identity, from hosting holidays to starting his passion project ‘Yoga with Jews’. Which makes sense, when you consider his Israeli father and his mother, who has led a synagogue and Jewish preschool for almost 30 years.
In our four years together, we’ve had beautiful, heated, and loving conversations about the terrible current events in the middle east. We’re really proud of the work we’ve done to center both of our backgrounds in these conversations, and though they’re not always the most fun topics, they’ve helped us build a strong foundation of trust, mutual respect, and empathy.
Our favorite part of every week this past year has been practicing those conversations during Nadia’s Jewish conversion classes, where each week, a Rabbi from a different denomination came to lead us through topics like Shabbat, “Post Traumatic God Disorder”, the Jewish Middle Ages, and our favorite, “Love, Marriage, & Kosher Sex”. Many of our classmates chose to come to class solo without their partners, but we had a great time making weekly “jew class” into fun & intellectual date nights (and Nadia got to see how much of a nerd Steve is in a Jewish classroom).
We’re beyond excited to celebrate Nadia’s favorite holiday, Sukkot and her first year as a Jew at our welcome party!
Anyway, if you made it this far, you are special. And that’s why we’re so excited to share a piece of our Colorado life with you: the mountains where we built so much of our love story and a place where we hope to grow old, raise little Turkeys, and build a lifetime of adventures and memories together.
Thank you for being part of our love story. Thank you for celebrating with us. ❤️