Married to social distancing
e’ll just go in the morning,” Alexandra Rose Brook Lynn told Adam Levy Thursday afternoon, since Mayor de Blasio’s press availability was running late, as usual, and it wasn’t like this was their wedding party but just making it official while marriage still counted as an essential service.
Adam had asked Alex to marry her in February, in Paris, and she had said yes.
They hadn’t been in any particular rush then to set a wedding date. But now — with the virus lingering in the air and on surfaces and inside bodies, and the city shutting down and health insurance in the balance — it was time. Love’s what counts but try selling that to the billing department.
Alex, 38, is my colleague at the podcast FAQ.NYC and also my best friend of 25 years, and the cousin of my wife (who designed Alex’s engagement ring, and says I can continue to shelter in place with her so long as I credit that here). This is Alex’s second marriage, after a starter one to a guy she met while they were getting sober and who wasn’t right, or ready. Adam, 32, is ready, and right; this is the real deal.
Friday morning, the two of them walked from Alex’s apartment on Bleecker St. toward City Hall, listening to WNYC ahead of the mayor’s weekly spot with Brian Lehrer. When they made it to 141 Worth St., there was a sign taped to the door:
“All offices of the City Clerk — NYC Marriage Bureau will be closed until further notice,” it read. “We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause you.”
Minutes later, Lehrer, citing a listener, asked de Blasio about the closure, which the mayor hadn’t mentioned in that interview or a previous one that morning.
“I’m going to confirm that,” de Blasio replied. “The things are moving so fast that I’m getting updates all the time. It would not surprise me if it’s closed…It’s painful because it’s such an important moment in people’s lives, but we’re also dealing with a crisis that we’ve never seen before.”
So Alex and Adam found their witnesses, photographer Daniel McKnight and a public school teacher who wasn’t playing hooky but Zooming with students, and the foursome walked around the corner to try and find a judge at criminal court.
They were told that there was no entry unless they were surrendering on outstanding warrants. Alex and Adam, who’ve maybe had a couple of those over the years, were on the wrong side of the law this time without any, and the group prepared to accept they were a day late when a photographer from a tabloid intervened, and talked to a court officer he knew.
That officer instructed them to return at 12:30, and the wedding party went off to find coffee and, recalls Alex, “we’re walking and it’s starting to rain and we’re listening to Andrew Cuomo on our phones and we realize he’s putting in a shelter-in-place order only he’s calling it a pause for some stupid reason.”
Despite the rain, it wasn’t looking auspicious for getting married, but the group returned to the courthouse and Judge Kevin McGrath, last seen in the papers setting Harvey Weinstein’s bail, came out. They walked across Centre St. to Collect Pond Park and, minutes later, Alex and Adam were married.
A second couple happened to walk through the park then, and McGrath also married Javier Negron, 30, and Joanshley Valentine, 20.
As to Alex and Adam, they plan to add a new last name, Murray, after Alex’s paternal grandfather (“our joke is that we’ll make everyone pronounce it ma-RAY and be annoying characters in a Wodehouse novel”), but that’s for whenever whatever new normal arrives.
Friday evening, the bride shared their honeymoon plan:
“I’m going to listen to the mayor’s presser” — where she planned to ask about his plan, or lack thereof, for inmates at Rikers — “and then we’ll walk around a park, together, and go home.”
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