Leslie and Adolfo met at a Mediterranean restaurant. It’s a funny thing – falafel – in order to make a falafel ball you have to scoop raw falafel into a tool, press it together, part them in the middle and drop them into the deep end of a fryer. Once they take the plunge, if they weren’t properly joined they fall apart and you’re faced with burnt, scattered pieces floating in your fryer. But, if you’ve compressed them in just the right way, they stay together amid the battering of boiling hot oil and make for a delicious snack. Leslie and Adolfo were serendipitously scooped together in January 2007 and, more than a decade after first meeting, have survived the hot oil and emerged as a delightful union. After years of school and career focus, they reconnected on social media in August 2015. Their first date was at Lumos in Manhattan’s West Village – where they learned they’d both lived two blocks away from one another for most of their lives. Date number three was a trip to Aguadilla, Puerto Rico. In six months they had moved into a one bedroom on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. In the summer of 2017, Leslie’s job gave her the opportunity of a lifetime: an all-expenses paid year in Japan. During a mid-year visit in January 2018, Adolfo asked Leslie on a date to Lumos once again – this time to propose marriage.