Haley Jill Draznin and Jason Leibowitz were married March 9 at Guastavino’s, an events space in New York. Rabbi Daniel Alder officiated.
The bride, 28, works in New York as a reporter and producer for CNN, covering political and business news. She graduated from Emory University in Atlanta.
She is a daughter of Sharon Rosenberg Draznin and Arthur J. Draznin of Short Hills, N.J. The bride’s father is an executive managing director of Cushman & Wakefield, a commercial real estate services company in New York. Her mother is an interior designer in Short Hills.
The groom, 32, works on Credit Suisse’s Blockchain team in New York. He graduated from George Washington University. He is a son of Myriam Siboni Leibowitz and David G. Leibowitz of West Palm Beach, Fla. The groom’s mother retired as a registered nurse at NYU Langone Medical Center in New York. His father is the chief information officer at Lebo Capital Management in West Palm Beach.
Ms. Draznin and Mr. Leibowitz met in June 2014 as guests at the wedding of a mutual friend in New York. They were introduced by Ms. Draznin’s brother, Andrew Draznin, who had played tennis with Mr. Leibowitz in college.
“We just talked and danced the rest of the night away,” Ms. Draznin said. “We had such a great time together.”
They soon discovered that they lived two floors apart in the same Manhattan building — he on the 10th floor and she on the 12th — and at the end of the evening they shared a cab ride home. They also learned that each was seeing someone else, so despite texting each other in the ensuing days they both lost touch, though they frequently bumped into each other in their building lobby.
“Running into each other wasn’t so much awkward as it was flirtatious,” Ms. Draznin said. “I don’t think there was any question that we still liked each other.”
Nevertheless, each had mostly given up on the idea of becoming romantically involved. Six months later, everything changed.
Mr. Leibowitz, who was now unattached, came home late one night and started a conversation with his doorman, John Maldonado, with whom he began opening up about wanting to find someone special.
“As we were talking, a bunch of girls entered the building and John starts chatting them up and laughing with them — he knew each of them on a first-name basis,” Mr. Leibowitz said. “When they left I said to him, ‘John, you know every girl in this building, can you introduce me to one of them.’”
Mr. Maldonado had become friendly with Ms. Draznin during her predawn CNN Newsroom hours, opening the door for her every morning at 4:30 a.m. as she went off to work. “There’s a girl named Haley in the building that is wonderful,” Mr. Maldonado said.
“Haley on the 12th floor?” Mr. Leibowitz replied.
“Yes! You know her, don’t mess that one up,” he joked.
Mr. Leibowitz, “helped along by that one nudge,” as he put it, began pursuing Ms. Draznin, who was also single at that time.
They began dating steadily in June 2015, and in February 2017, Ms. Draznin shortened their already short-distance relationship by moving in with Mr. Leibowitz.
“What I really liked most about Haley was that she was very smart and really cool and had a super-impressive job,” Mr. Leibowitz said. “Yet despite everything she had going for her, she was not some uptight girl with her head in the clouds. She was instead just this sort of mellow person, like I am, which made us very compatible.”
They became engaged in February 2018.
The couple invited Mr. Maldonado to their wedding, “because without him, Haley and I would probably have never happened,” Mr. Leibowitz said. “He helped me realize that the whole time, my ultimate soul mate was right under my nose,” he said.
Or to be more precise, two floors above it.
Source: Read Full Article