Mosopefoluwa Ogundipe and Iyanuoluwa Imoru are from the same Nigerian state, Ondo, the same local government area, Akoko North-East, and the same Yoruba tribe. But it wasn’t until they were halfway around the world that their paths crossed.
Mr. Ogundipe, 28, who goes by Sope, and Ms. Imoru, 29, known as Iyanu, met in September 2019 at the Richard Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing Conference in San Diego. Ms. Imoru was standing in a line of people waiting to speak to Microsoft representatives when she heard Mr. Ogundipe’s familiar accent.
They chatted for a bit, but Mrs. Imoru remained laser-focused. “I was trying to get a job, not to meet a man,” she said.
Two days later, at the same conference, they attended a meeting on the beach, where they spent much more time talking. Then they shared an Uber back to their respective hotels. When the driver accidentally passed Mr. Ogundipe’s hotel, he took it as a sign that he would get her phone number.
After the computer conference, they kept in touch sporadically, and over time, more regularly, until they spoke daily.
The two had moved to the United States a year earlier, in 2018, to continue their education. mr. A graduate of the University of Lagos, Ogundipe had enrolled at San Francisco State University to earn a master’s degree in engineering. Ms. Imoru, a graduate of Obafemi Awolowo University and a law degree from Nigerian Law School, came to pursue a master’s degree in computer and information systems from Prairie View A&M University in Texas.
Shortly after Mr. Ogundipe completed his master’s degree in May 2020, he took a job in Austin, Texas. The two then started seeing each other every weekend; they would meet in Houston, or he would visit her in Prairie View.
Mr. Ogundipe, who had never had a girlfriend before, knew he wanted Ms. Imoru to be his first because they shared the same values and envisioned a similar future. “It was just this deep-seated knowledge that I knew this is the person,” he said.
Although she was open to becoming a couple, Ms Imoru was initially hesitant to get married. “Let’s see if we can make it through a week of personal dating,” she recalls.
She came up with the idea in August 2020. “I personally noticed how great we were together,” says Ms. Imoru, who completed her master’s degree in December.
“I love how smart he is,” she added. “One of our first conversations was about a computer problem and it lasted several hours, but in it he showed how smart and funny he is and always makes me laugh.”
In February 2021, Ms. Imoru began her current job as an infrastructure engineering associate at AllianceBernstein, a Nashville-based wealth management firm, where she moved in July and now resides.
The month before, Mr. Ogundipe had proposed to her on a boat while they were traveling to Florida in June 2021.
Mr. Ogundipe currently resides in Austin and works remotely as a software engineer at LinkedIn, the online networking platform, in Sunnyvale, California.
The couple married on April 30 at Woodlands Methodist Church in the Woodlands, Texas. dr. John Hull, the pastor of the missions at the church, led the ceremony before about 250 guests. A reception followed in a hall on the church grounds.
The night before they married, they held a traditional Nigerian wedding ceremony at Crowne Plaza Shenandoah, also in the Woodlands, with about 120 family members and friends. During that ceremony, the family of Mr. Ogundipe the family of Mrs. Imoru food such as yams, oil and rice, and mr. Ogundipe and his groomsmen prostrated before her family. The bride, who takes the groom’s last name, plans to move to Austin to live with him.
About a year before the couple met, Mr Ogundipe’s mother had sent him a WhatsApp message saying that she had prayed that he would take a Nigerian woman home. “All you can do is pray,” Ogundipe recalled when he replied. “I’m open to everyone.”
Of the woman he eventually found, Mr. Ogundipe said, “I preferred this one,” then added, “I just didn’t know.”
