A Childhood Crush Becomes Something More in Adulthood

On an overnight stopover in Los Angeles in September 2017, Alicia Cepeda Maule arranged a meeting with her childhood crush, Isabelle Claire Davis, at the Black Cat, a bar in the Silver Lake neighborhood.

They had grown up as family friends a few blocks apart in the Kenwood community of Chicago, but hadn’t seen each other since their teens.

Ms. Davis expected a quick catch-up drink, but ended up talking to Ms. Maule for hours. Ms. Maule, for her part, confirmed that her interest from decades ago was still there.

“I remember leaving and feeling like she’s the coolest,” Ms. Maule said. “She’s got the best taste in music, she smells the best.”

After a second date a few days later when Ms. Maule stopped over in Los Angeles on her way back to New York City, they began a relationship.

“We didn’t really intend to start dating,” Ms. Davis said. “We just never stopped talking.”

Ms. Maule, 35, is a digital engagement director at the Innocence Project, a nonprofit group that works to overturn wrongful convictions, and a founder and chief executive of Givepact, a crypto currency philanthropy platform. In 2012, she was a project manager on Barack Obama’s presidential campaign. She has a bachelor’s degree in Africana Studies from Brown.

Ms. Davis, 38, is an assistant kindergarten teacher. She received a bachelor’s in writing, literature and publishing at Emerson College and is working toward a master’s degree in early education at the Erikson Institute in Chicago.

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After years of dating long distance, Ms. Maule and Ms. Davis moved in with Ms. Maule’s mother, Adela Cepeda, in Kenwood, at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic. They cooked, baked and barbecued, and reconnected with their hometown. But in December 2021, fractures from the pandemic forced the two to split. During their 10 months apart, or their “gap year” as they call it, Ms. Maule said she experienced “personal growth.”

“In that time I realized that I can’t imagine a life without Isabelle,” Ms. Maule said. “She’s brilliant, she’s an expert with kids, she’s politically savvy, she has her heart to the world.”

She added, “She knows me better than I know myself.”

When Ms. Maule and Ms. Davis reconnected in September 2022, Ms. Davis made it clear that she wanted a serious commitment. “I let her know, this goes forward in one direction,” Ms. Davis said. “And she said, ‘Absolutely, that’s why I’m here.’”

On Jan. 26, Ms. Davis’s 38th birthday, Ms. Maule told Ms. Davis they needed to pick up a piece of mail from her family’s old house. When they got there, Ms. Davis spotted a photographer and figured that he was a paparazzo — the residence the Obamas lived in before his presidency is nearby. In front of the house, Ms. Maule got down on one knee and proposed with her grandmother’s Art Deco diamond engagement ring in hand.

After a photo shoot with the photographer that was actually there for them, Ms. Maule surprised Ms. Davis with a party at Ms. Cepeda’s apartment.

“She knocked on the door, said ‘Hi, it’s me,’ and suddenly there’s a mariachi band, cameras clicking, my best friends from New York, my aunt and my dad from California, my brother and his wife from New Jersey,” Ms. Davis said. “I thought I was going to faint.”

Walter Arenas, a friend of the couple, prepared carne asada tacos and mole for a seated dinner, and Ms. Davis’s mother, Deborah Davis, baked a passion fruit cake.

On Aug. 1, Ms. Davis and Ms. Maule were married by Wanyi Mai, a clerk at the Manhattan Marriage Bureau, with their mothers as witnesses. Afterward, the four had dinner at the River Café in Brooklyn Bridge Park. They had considered having a big wedding in 2025, but out of concern that L.G.B.T.Q. rights could be rolled back after the presidential election, they said, they decided to wed sooner rather than later.

Still, they couldn’t resist a party — or two. Ms. Davis surprised Ms. Maule with a “’Tinis and Weenies” party, featuring martinis, hot dogs and a Carvel ice cream cake, at their friend’s home in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, on July 27. Ms. Maule and Ms. Davis also hosted a celebration for 75 people at Nicky’s Unisex, a bar in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, on the night of their nuptials.

“It was important to our friends to get the chance to celebrate us,” Ms. Maule said.