dr. Jasmine Cecilia Huynh called off her first date with Vivek Viswanathan in June 2017 without explanation.
“I wasn’t fit for a date,” said Dr Huynh, 32, who had interacted with Mr Viswanathan on the Tinder dating app a few weeks earlier, canceling him after experiencing what she called the worst day ever during her first year of residency at UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento, California.
When the skies cleared about a week later, she made contact again, not a moment too soon.
“In my mind I was already further along,” said Mr Viswanathan, 34.
The two then met at Hock Farm Craft & Provisions, a now-closed bar-restaurant in Sacramento near the state capitol, where Mr. Viswanathan was then working as a special adviser to Governor Jerry Brown’s chief of staff.
Mr. Viswanathan, who holds the title of financial analyst, began working remotely as a senior policy advisor with the White House National Economic Council in January 2021 and now travels between Washington and Sacramento. After graduating summa cum laude from Harvard, he earned a master’s degree in philosophy in historical studies from Cambridge University and a law degree and an MBA from Stanford.
dr. Huynh is now the principal fellow in the division of hematology and oncology at UC Davis Medical Center, and is also completing a master’s degree in advanced study in clinical research at the University of California, Davis. She graduated with honors from the University of California, Los Angeles, and received a medical degree from Tulane University.
On their first date, they sat at a table in the shape of the state of California and identified with each other as children of immigrants – his parents were from India and hers from Vietnam. (Her parents escaped by boat to Hong Kong in 1980 and now live in Fremont, California.)
“That was a common thread,” said Dr. Huynh.
Then they walked through Capitol Park and before she got into her car, he surprised her with a kiss.
A few weeks later, they met for breakfast at Mimosa House in East Sacramento around 7 a.m. She came off the night shift and he was on his way to work.
“It will take a lot of effort to figure out when we are awake and free at the same time,” he recalls.
As they continued to date, Mr. Viswanathan tried to persuade Dr. Huynh, an avid runner, to take him for a run. At first, she said she felt she would be better off spending her time running alone. “I thought it must be a solitary pursuit,” she said.
But that fall, she reluctantly joined Mr. Viswanathan for a round of McKinley Park, and it became a weekly activity. dr. Huynh later encouraged him when he ran the California International Marathon in December 2017; he cheered her on when she led it a year later.
In January 2018, Mr. Viswanathan competed in the primary race for Treasurer of the State of California, as a Democrat. In the following months, he ran 625 miles, from Sacramento to San Diego. dr. Huynh walked beside him that spring and accompanied him for several miles in the Los Angeles area.
He moved in with her in November after losing the primary and taking a job as deputy budget director to Governor Gavin Newsom.
The couple became engaged in January 2020. Mr. Viswanathan proposed in a yurt on the roof of Ample Hills Creamery, their favorite ice cream parlor, in Gowanus, Brooklyn, while they were traveling to visit his parents in New Hyde Park, NY. the yurt, on a sofa, was a small pillow embroidered with the text, “A betrothed is one of the nicest things to have and the nicest thing to be.”
They originally planned to get married in July 2021, but have postponed the wedding due to the pandemic. On November 23, Vikram Viswanathan, a minister of Universal Life and the groom’s brother, performed in front of 40 guests at a ceremony on the mayor’s balcony at San Francisco City Hall, where attendees enjoyed a Vietnamese tea ceremony earlier that day.
The couple’s wedding was a multi-day and bicoastal affair with other events including a mass on Nov. 22 at the Mission San Jose in Fremont, California, a Hindu ceremony in Flushing, Queens, on Nov. 27, and, of course, a stop. at Ample Hills for ice cream.
