Michael Theron McVicker and Ian Poris Slater met on the Brown University campus in 2008, when both were visiting as high school students on a swim team recruiting trip.
Mr. McVicker, of Larchmont, NY, had been open about homosexuality in high school. “A core memory was that he’s a really cool, handsome, normal guy,” said Mr. Slater, who grew up in the Baltimore area and was still figuring out his sexuality.
He didn’t realize it when both started as students at Brown, where they quickly became best friends, largely because their lives revolved around the swim team in and out of the pool. Except on Sundays, practice was held from 6 am to 7:30 am; an hour-long workout at the gym at 3 p.m.; and then two more hours back in the pool until 6 pm
Because he spent so much time together, Mr. Slater quickly developed a crush on Mr. McVicker. Still, during a trip they made to New York in December 2010 for New Year’s Eve, he resisted telling Mr. McVicker how romantic it felt to be walking with him through the confetti-covered streets of Times Square at 3 a.m. on New Year’s Day. walk.
The following March, after Mr. Slater came out, his feelings for Mr. McVicker came out as the swimming season ended.
“I had a messy, pent-up energy telling Mike I wanted to be with him,” Mr. Slater said.
They then had a “flirt,” as Mr. McVicker put it, which he said was “fun.” But before going to Bologna, Italy that summer for a semester abroad, Mr. McVicker puts a brake on their romance.
“I thought we had such a good friendship,” said Mr. McVicker, who Mr. Slater encouraged to date others. “I didn’t want to mess it up.”
While Mr. McVicker was in Italy, Mr. Slater studied Arabic at Columbia University and began dating someone else. “At first I was happy for him,” Mr. McVicker said, but eventually he realized, “Wait, I don’t want Ian going out with this other person,” as he put it.
They started dating seriously towards the end of their junior year with Brown, but kept their relationship a secret as seniors, both said, because they had risen to swim team co-captains and wanted to avoid distractions.
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Ten days after graduating in 2013, Mr. McVicker began an internship as a project manager at Sciame, a New York-based construction company. That fall, after Mr. Slater began an internship as a real estate agent with Douglas Elliman in New York, the couple moved to the financial district.
Mr. Slater, 30, is now a residential real estate broker and the chairman of the Slater team at Compass, a real estate company, in New York. Mr. McVicker, 31, is a developer who purchases and renovates homes in Rhode Island.
In 2015, they adopted Stella, an Alabama rescue dog, and two years later they moved to the Upper East Side to be near Central Park for her. In January 2020, they moved into what they both called their dream fireplace apartment in Greenwich Village, where Mr. McVicker, then full-time working on Rhode Island properties, spent long weekends.
When the pandemic hit, Mr. Slather himself with Mr. McVicker in Rhode Island. After staying in a house owned by Mr. McVicker in Newport, they moved into an apartment in Providence, in a historic home where Mr. McVicker was working on.
In August 2020, Mr. Slater proposed to a lake at Twin Farms, a resort in Barnard, Virginia. He sensed it was coming and remembered telling him, “Don’t you dare get down on one knee.” A month later, they bought a dilapidated house in Newport, which they renovated and became their second home.
The two were married on March 19 at the Bowery Hotel in New York, in front of 176 guests who, as requested, had attached proof of vaccinations to their RSVPs. Nicholas Vitrano, a college friend of the couple who became Ministers of Universal Life for the occasion, performed at the ceremony, which was attended by Mr. Slater’s 96-year-old maternal grandmother, Florence Poris.
“We had no visions of a wedding,” Mr. Slater said. “But it was really important to throw a great party with our friends and family, and we certainly did.”