Dillon Jones and Matthew McDermott were both relatively new to New York when they found each other through a dating app in 2016. Once they met, they never looked back.
Both had moved to New York from Washington—Mr. McDermott for a job, Mr. Jones for a relationship, which didn’t work out—and both lived on the Upper East Side, just blocks from each other. Their first date was at a place halfway through their apartments.
mr. McDermott, 31, said he fell in love when he met Mr. Jones, 30, first saw. “I believe it was the second time he walked into the bar,” he said.
“I really liked his smile, to be honest,” said Mr. Jones. “He just seemed very charismatic.”
Mr. Jones also said he didn’t want the night to end.
“After we talked for a few hours, I definitely saw this going somewhere, and I can’t wait to see where this goes,” he said.
They soon became inseparable. “Probably after the first week, I thought, this is the person I want to spend the rest of my life with,” said Mr. Jones. “He likes to tell the story that we first met, and after that I never left, which is actually true.”
The two found that they complemented each other: Mr. McDermott is outgoing and Mr. Jones is more shy.
But, notes Mr. McDermott on, Mr. Jones can warm up anywhere.
“We go into a room together – a cocktail party, a restaurant – and by the end of the night every person in the room will know him because he has that way about him,” said Mr. McDermott. “He’s very thoughtful and poignant in the way he interacts with people.”
In addition to their different personality types, “we come from completely different worlds,” said Mr. McDermott. “I grew up across the water in Rhode Island and went fishing every weekend. Dillon grew up in Nebraska. They grow corn and soy, and they had cows. We both, me in particular, brought those different backgrounds into our relationship. It has created such an interesting dynamic.”
Mr. Jones is a graduate of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and until June was a senior teacher at Success Academy Bronx 4, in the Soundview section. Later this month, he will begin teaching fifth grade at Carl G. Lauro Elementary School in Providence, RI, where the couple recently purchased a home. Mr. McDermott is a graduate of George Washington University and is now vice president of Whitman Insight Strategies, a New York-based polling firm.
Although he never really felt a sense of belonging growing up in Nebraska, “which is very conservative,” Mr. Jones said, he experienced an immediate sense of security in Mr. McDermott. “A month after we started dating,” Mr. Jones said, “I met his parents for the first time. I knew he saw something in me and he wanted it to stay that way.”
On August 7, the couple married in an outdoor ceremony at the Pilgrim Monument in Provincetown, Massachusetts. Alex B. Morse, a friend of the couple, the Provincetown city manager and a justice of the peace in Massachusetts, performed. . They had 125 guests (mostly vaccinated). The couple had planned to marry in August 2020 but were postponed due to the pandemic.
“After a month or two, I knew this was my path,” said Mr. Jones. “This was who I should be with, and I’m going to work on this to make it as perfect as possible.”
