14-02-2025
Their Late-Night Phone Calls Confirmed They Were Right for Each Other
On a night out at 1-800-Lucky, an Asian food hall in Miami, Kieran Randolph Miller's sister directed his attention toward Emma Marie McGee, who was there with a friend.
'There was a running joke that my sister didn't think I was interested in the girls I was dating,' Mr. Miller said. 'She'd say, 'I don't see that girl as your type.' When she saw Emma, the first thing she said was, 'Now that's your type.''
She turned out to be right. Mr. Miller and Ms. McGee, who were both on vacation, spoke for an hour or so that evening in January 2022. They hit it off, and the next morning, Mr. Miller and his friend made the half-hour drive from the Wynwood neighborhood, where they were staying, to South Beach, where Ms. McGee was staying, so he could casually direct message her on Instagram to say they were having brunch in the area.
'Then we had our first date,' Ms. McGee said, 'with a chaperone.'
Afterward, Ms. McGee flew back to Seattle, where she lived at the time, and Mr. Miller returned to New York, where he and Ms. McGee live now.
Ms. McGee, 28, grew up in Lake Stevens, Wash., outside Seattle, and received an associate degree in merchandise and marketing from the Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising in Los Angeles. She moved to New York City in 2023 and works as a digital design director at Amrak Solutions, a company that builds digital platforms for businesses.
Mr. Miller, 29, was born and raised in Montclair, N.J., and received a bachelor's degree in economics from St. Lawrence University in Canton, N.Y. He is a senior director at JLL, a real estate services firm. In 2019, he opened his own business, Burchard, which renovates, develops and rents residential properties.
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For several weeks after meeting, Ms. McGee and Mr. Miller talked on the phone for hours every night, often staying up until 2 a.m. Eastern Standard Time.
'There was no pressure of, what should we do?' Ms. McGee said. 'It was us just talking and getting to know each other almost as friends.'
One evening toward the end of February, Ms. McGee realized she needed to see Mr. Miller in person as soon as possible.
'I'm falling for him,' she remembered thinking. 'I need to visit him or stop communication. If this isn't going anywhere, what's the point of getting my heart invested? He was asleep and I was texting him, 'I'm booking a flight for next week.''
They had their first kiss during that visit, at Somewhere Nowhere NYC, a club in Manhattan's Chelsea neighborhood.
'After that, it was smooth sailing,' Mr. Miller said.
In December 2022, Ms. McGee started a remote role and moved into Mr. Miller's apartment in New York the following month. That March, Mr. Miller took a leave of absence to further his professional education, and the couple went on a two-month trip around Europe.
'We put ourselves into this pressure cooker,' Ms. McGee said. 'It was fun, but you're out of your comfort zone, you're living out of a bag. You don't have a lot of the things you need. Your life is on display for the other person. If you're upset there's nowhere to go. We had to work through things quickly.'
The trip brought them closer, and a little more than a year later, last June, Ms. McGee and Mr. Miller decided to get married so they could begin building a family.
'Truthfully, we weren't interested in the idea of a wedding,' Ms. McGee said. 'We wanted to marry each other because we want a life together and we want kids.'
A few days after their conversation, the two went to SoHo and Ms. McGee quickly found a brown hooded dress from Saint Laurent that she'd had her eye on. The same day, they picked out an engagement ring at East West Gem.
On Jan. 17, Ms. McGee's birthday, Mr. Miller took her out to dinner at Din Tai Fung, a Taiwanese chain, while a friend of hers decorated their apartment with candles and flowers. When they got home, he proposed.
They were married a week and a half later, on Jan. 28, at the New York City Marriage Bureau, with Ms. McGee's mother, Stephanie Childers, and Mr. Miller's father, Randolph Miller, as witnesses. Michael McSweeney, the city clerk, officiated. Afterward, they celebrated with 30 guests at a dinner catered by the French restaurant Le Crocodile in a penthouse suite at the Wythe Hotel in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
The event was laid back, with no dress code and a playlist the couple made serving as the musical entertainment. To make the modern space feel cozy, Ms. McGee decorated it with vintage Persian rugs and antique lamps.
Mr. Miller made a speech: 'I just wanted to explain how much fun we had doing this and we matched the wedding to who we are.'
