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Days after Louis P. Di Cerbo swiped Dr. Robin G. Stafford into his world on the courting app Bumble in July 2020, that they had a wide-ranging cellphone dialog that advanced right into a chat about their profession accomplishments.
“She was featured in Crain’s Chicago Business,” Mr. Di Cerbo, 62, mentioned of Dr. Stafford, who’s the chief dental officer for the Howard Brown Health Center, a nonprofit well being care group in Chicago that focuses on serving the L.G.B.T.Q. neighborhood.
But Mr. Di Cerbo, a lawyer, didn’t watch for Dr. Stafford, 62, to inform him that. “I immediately looked her up,” he mentioned, laughing.
“I had to do my due diligence,” added Mr. Di Cerbo, the final counsel and chief compliance officer for Matrix Global, a Chicago-based firm that gives know-how and consulting companies to the power storage trade. A graduate of Hamilton College in Clinton, N.Y., he obtained a regulation diploma from Boston University.
Dr. Stafford, who graduated from the University of Illinois in Urbana, Ill., and obtained a medical diploma from Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, Ill., mentioned she was equally impressed with Mr. Di Cerbo.
“He was very handsome and extremely intelligent,” mentioned Dr. Stafford, who had been single for 13 years earlier than they met. “We realized right away that we shared many passions,” she added, “such as cooking, fitness, travel, clothing, art and jazz.”
Both had been married earlier than, too. Dr. Stafford, who divorced her first husband in 2008, described the expertise as “traumatic,” including that a number of the ache it prompted subsided when she “immediately connected” with Mr. Di Cerbo.
Mr. Di Cerbo had skilled ache of his personal when his second spouse died in May 2019. His first marriage, he added, “was brief” and “ended in divorce back in the ’90s,” he mentioned.
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“Robin is a survivor, like I am,” added Mr. Di Cerbo. “I had to deal 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 bedrock, the very foundation of our relationship.”
Soon after their cellphone dialog, they organized for a primary date at a restaurant in Chicago.
“The moment I sat down beside him, I felt very at ease, very comfortable,” Dr. Stafford mentioned. The mom of two grown youngsters from her earlier marriage, she added, “He came across as a very family-oriented person, as I am.” (Mr. Di Cerbo mentioned that Dr. Stafford “was so family-oriented, that I met her brother on our third date.”)
After dinner on their first date, Dr. Stafford and Mr. Di Cerbo took a stroll to close by Wicker Park, the place they sat and talked some extra.
“We both came away from our first date convinced that we had met our lifetime partner,” Mr. Di Cerbo mentioned.
The couple dated for a few yr earlier than turning into engaged on July 23, 2021. That September, Dr. Stafford met Mr. Di Cerbo’s dad and mom.
“Back in September, during our first dinner with my parents, who are both 91 and live in Schenectady, N.Y., my dad couldn’t stop asking Robin about her dental practice,” mentioned Mr. Di Cerbo, whose mom, Rose Kimura Di Cerbo is Japanese American, and father, Louis Robert Di Cerbo, Italian American. Dr. Stafford’s dad and mom, Evelyn H. Gay and Robert L. Gay, are deceased.
The two have been married Dec. 4 by the Rev. Richard Kirchherr on the First Congregational Church of Western Springs in Western Springs, Ill., the place they stay. Sixty friends, all vaccinated, attended.
“I’m so thrilled that we found each other, we’re a modern tri-racial couple,” mentioned the bride, who’s African-American. “There are now so many possibilities for us to consider moving forward, and together in life.”
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