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Joseph Bartlett Fay and Daniel Wayne Garness, fittingly, met face-to-face inside an architectural landmark — now referred to as the Burns House, designed by Charles Moore, the postmodernist architect, on a hillside in Santa Monica Canyon in California.
“Dan is a residential and panorama designer,” Mr. Fay mentioned. “I’m an architectural fanatic.”
Six months earlier, in March 2012, the pair met by way of e mail by way of mutual pals, who thought, distance apart, they might be excellent for one another — Mr. Fay, 68, lived in Park Slope, Brooklyn, and Mr. Garness, 70, in Los Angeles.
In September, after a gradual begin — they emailed three months earlier than talking on the cellphone — Mr. Fay flew out to Los Angeles to attend a fund-raiser for the Children’s Brain Tumor Foundation, of which he was then the manager director. He graduated magna cum laude with a level in historical past from Boston College and obtained an M.B.A. from Columbia.
Mr. Garness invited him over whereas house-sitting for his buddy, the late Leland Burns, a University of California, Los Angeles professor of city planning, who owned the home on the time. The home is now a part of the Charles Moore Foundation.
“I assumed Joe was lovely, actually clever, actually adventurous, achieved and worldly,” mentioned Mr. Garness, the principal of Garness Studio, a residential and panorama design agency then in Los Angeles and New Orleans.
Mr. Garness graduated with a bachelor of structure from Louisiana State University and Mr. Moore was his mentor whereas he pursued a grasp’s in structure for 2 years at U.C.L.A. He additionally later labored at his agency, Moore Ruble Yudell, in Santa Monica.
Mr. Fay and Mr. Garness sipped drinks on the patio earlier than going out to an area Mexican restaurant. Later, as they gazed on the full moon from a balcony overlooking the pool on the home, that they had their first kiss, and agreed to see one another once more.
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In November, they spent a weekend in Phoenix, the place Mr. Garness, on his manner again to Los Angeles from a mission in New Orleans, accompanied Mr. Fay to a fund-raiser on the Arizona Science Center.
“I knew I used to be in love with him,” Mr. Garness mentioned, they usually quickly realized they needed to be collectively.
In July, Mr. Fay made the bounce to Los Angeles after touchdown a job as the manager director at ThinkCure!, a kids’s charity then supporting most cancers analysis, from which he retired in 2017.
“How usually do you will have this occur?” mentioned Mr. Fay, who drove 5 days cross-county in his Volvo with Bear, his 12-year-old black cat on the time. “You discover the precise man and head off into the remainder of your life?”
On weekends they visited homes Mr. Garness had renovated or constructed, from Oxnard to Hollywood; they went to museums, together with the Getty, whose backyard has each plant conceivable; they usually ate at old-school eating places like Musso & Frank Grill.
Mr. Garness, a fan of minimalist music, additionally took him to the Philip Glass opera “Einstein on the Beach” they usually listened to works by John Cage on the Ojai Music Festival.
“I didn’t should apologize for it,” mentioned Mr. Garness with fun, who moved to Los Angeles in 1978, and was initially from New Orleans. “Joe had open ears.”
Mr. Fay stayed in a company condo for a month, then for a 12 months rented slightly bungalow in West Hollywood. In 2013 they purchased a 1926 English Cottage-style home within the Silver Lake space overlooking downtown Los Angeles.
In Spring 2018, Mr. Garness proposed on their roof with a hoop made out of hammered silver quarters from an area boutique. Then, with an an identical ring, Mr. Fay, who braved the heights, proposed to him.
In September 2018, they moved to the Irish Channel neighborhood of New Orleans, close to the Garden District, about 45-minutes away from Mr. Garness’s 94-year-old father.
“We hear the river at night time, the barges and the boat horns,” Mr. Garness mentioned.
They dwell in an 1885 Italianate home three blocks from the Mississippi River, with their tabby cat Kerouac, and Ralph, a Clumber spaniel rescue they adopted in February. They attempt to make it to each Mardi Gras parade of their neighborhood, and in addition get pleasure from native jazz, regional theater productions and the Marigny Opera House.
“A great home is a snapshot of the world,” Mr. Garness mentioned. “Equal elements shelter and goals. Marriage is perhaps slightly like that too.”
On May 1, Richard Perque, judge professional tempore of the Civil District Court of the Parish of Orleans, officiated on the Civil District Court in New Orleans, with Mr. Garness’s father and his girlfriend as their witnesses.
They later celebrated, with a couple of dozen friends, in a buddy’s courtyard within the French Quarter with Champagne and a lemon cake with butter cream from Bywater Bakery close by.
“We have been happy to seek out vacationers applauding as two older guys walked hand-in-hand being photographed on their marriage ceremony day,” mentioned Mr. Fay. “It was utterly sudden.”
