Days after Louis Patrick Di Cerbo in July 2020, Dr. Robin Gay Stafford into his world through the dating app Bumble, they had an extended phone conversation that evolved into a conversation about their career achievements.
“She was featured in Crain’s Chicago Business,” Mr. Di Cerbo, 62, said of Dr. Stafford, who is the chief dental officer of the Howard Brown Health Center, a Chicago-based nonprofit health organization focused on serving the LGBTQ community.
But Mr. Di Cerbo, a lawyer, did not wait for Dr. Stafford, 62, told him so. “I immediately went to see her,” he said with a laugh.
“I had to do my due diligence,” added Mr. Di Cerbo, the general counsel and chief compliance officer of Matrix Global, a Chicago-based company that provides technology and advisory services to the energy storage industry. A graduate of Hamilton College in Clinton, NY, he received a law degree from Boston University.
dr. Stafford, who graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana, Illinois, and received a medical degree from Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, Illinois, said she was equally impressed with Mr. DiCerbo.
“He was very handsome and extremely intelligent,” said Dr. Stafford, who was single for 13 years before they met. “We immediately realized we shared a lot of passions,” she added, “such as cooking, fitness, travel, clothing, art and jazz.”
Both had also been married before. dr. Stafford, who divorced her first husband in 2008, described the experience as “traumatic”, adding that some of the pain it caused eased when she “made immediate contact” with Mr Di Cerbo.
Di Cerbo had experienced his own pain when his second wife died in May 2019. His first marriage, he added, “was short-lived” and “ended in divorce in the 1990s,” he said.
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“Robin is a survivor, just like me,” added Mr Di Cerbo. “I was dealing with the death of my wife and she with a very difficult divorce. While we may be survivors, we are both very strong, and that is the foundation, the foundation of our relationship.”
Shortly after their phone call, they arranged a first date at a Chicago restaurant.
“The moment I sat down next to him I felt very comfortable, very comfortable,” said Dr. stafford. The mother of two grown children from her previous marriage, she added: “He came across as a very family-oriented person, just like me.” (Mr. Di Cerbo said Dr. Stafford was “so family oriented, I met her brother on our third date.”)
After dinner on their first date, Dr. Stafford and Mr. Di Cerbo took a walk to nearby Wicker Park, where they chatted for a while.
“We both came away from our first date believing we had met our life partner,” said Mr. Di Cerbo.
The couple dated for about a year before getting engaged on July 23, 2021. In September, Dr. Stafford the parents of Mr Di Cerbo.
“September, during our first dinner with my parents, who are both 91 and live in Schenectady, NY, my father couldn’t stop asking Robin about her dental practice,” said Mr. Di Cerbo, whose mother, Rose Kimura Di Cerbo, is Japanese-American, and father, Louis Robert Di Cerbo, Italian-American. The parents of Dr. Stafford, Evelyn H. Gay and Robert L. Gay, have passed away.
The two were married on December 4 by Rev. Richard Kirchherr at the First Congregational Church of Western Springs in Western Springs, Illinois, where they reside. Sixty guests, all vaccinated, attended.
“I’m so glad we found each other, we’re a modern tri-racial couple,” said the bride, who is African American. “There are now so many opportunities for us to move forward, and in life together.”
