Katie Dawn Schad and Adam Robert Purdy began a fun, flirty friendship ten years after they bumped into each other in their dorm at Wesleyan’s first week in 2009.
“I have an aunt and uncle who live in Studio City,” said Mr. Purdy, once Mrs. Schad said she was from that part of Los Angeles. “Have you ever been to Beeman Park?” He grew up in Montclair, New Jersey
“Yeah, maybe,” she said of the small neighborhood park. And that was that.
The two, like other first-year athletes, had arrived at Clark Hall early—he was an All-American goalie for the first year of the football team, and she was on the volleyball team and captain’s senior year.
“Our groups of friends regularly clashed,” said Mr. Purdy. So they often showed up at the same fraternity and house parties, hung out at the Nest bar, or just sat around Foss Hill.
Although they never became close at school and dated other people, Mr. Purdy said that even then her “outspoken laugh and hilarity stood out”.
She and Mr. Purdy, both now 32, went their separate ways after graduating in 2013 — he with a bachelor’s degree in psychology; she with a in psychology and science in society. After another year at Wesleyan, she also earned a master’s degree in psychology.
In 2014, he was already living in Manhattan’s Alphabet City neighborhood when she moved to Crown Heights, Brooklyn with her college boyfriend. Two years later, after her relationship ended, she started hanging out more with her other college friends, including Mr. Purdy, now director of marketing at the National Basketball Association in Manhattan.
They got to know each other better in the summer of 2017 when she and her close friend, who also happened to be his close friend, joined him and 14 others at a home in East Hampton.
When Ms. Schad, a senior producer at 72andSunny, an ad agency in Dumbo, Brooklyn, moved into a NoLIta walk-up apartment in 2018, her roof quickly became an important party and meeting place, a kind of university clubhouse. Mr. Purdy usually made it his job to be there.
“We’ve gotten a little flirty,” she said. “I loved having Adam’s attention.”
In the early summer of 2019, she said she was thrilled to see “his crazy unfiltered side” when nine college buddies squeezed into two rooms for a weekend at Hartman’s Briney Breezes Beach Resort in Montauk, NY
“When we woke up, Adam couldn’t find his glasses,” said Ms. Schad, who crashed into the same room with her friend as Mr. Purdy and his roommate. ‘He couldn’t see anything. He milked it for laughs.”
Later that summer, after a few of them went back to the same spot in Montauk for Labor Day weekend, she said, “the vibe changed.”
As she and Mr. Purdy chatted nonstop on the train back to the city, he invited her to join him and his roommate that night for their Sunday night ritual, which was Chinese takeout at Uncle Ted’s restaurant.
“I think I have feelings for Katie Schad,” he recalls telling his roommate after she left. Once he told friends and family, their advice was to take it easy.
It doesn’t matter, early October he confessed his feelings as they sat in a booth at Acme NYC, a NoHo lounge.
“Dude, it’s 2am,” she said. “Tell me tomorrow.”
After he did, they became inseparable.
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She then spent Thanksgiving with him and his family in Montclair. His father, Matt Purdy, is an editor-in-chief at DailyExpertNews. During a round of post-dinner charades, she jokingly scribbled a clue on a piece of paper for Adam Purdy.
It read, “Marry Me Katie,” which he read and quickly hid. Later he put the piece of paper in a plastic bag so that the ink would not fade.
When Covid hit in 2020, she packed a suitcase and stayed with him in Greenwich Village. They banged pots and pans at 7pm to recognize health workers, ran along the West Side Highway and started watching Formula 1 Racing.
In June, they moved into a larger apartment in Williamsburg near McCarren Park, and in February 2021, they adopted a 15-year-old cat Max from a friend who had moved.
In the fall of 2021, he told Ms. Shad, “I think we should get engaged in 2022 Q1.”
On February 25, 2022, she expected his cousins (who were actually vacationing in Switzerland) to drop by before they all went out for dinner. As soon as the two stepped outside to get some wine and cheese, a friend came over to set the tone.
When they returned, Mrs. Schad’s old hint appeared in a frame surrounded by candles and rose petals on their coffee table, and Max their cat put on a bow tie.
Mr. Purdy read a poem he had written. He then got down on one knee and asked, “Will you marry me?”
On May 20, a rainy Saturday, Lauren M. Kurtz, a cousin of the groom who became the pastor of Universal Life Church for the event, performed for 175 guests in a cozy tent pitched on a grassy, muddy hill near the Crow’s Nest. restaurant, in Montauk.
“It felt like a big hug,” said the bride of the intimate setting. Later at the restaurant, they enjoyed free-flowing espresso martinis over dinner.