For their first date, Jess, a U.S. Space Force officer, and Joe, a healthcare investor, went on an “ice cream crawl,” hopping from ice cream shop to ice cream shop in Bethesda. The idea was Joe’s—who Jess says she remembers thinking was the friendliest person she’d ever encountered. His first impression was that she was low-key and easy to talk to—they ended up spending hours in one shop chatting about “books, Costco, and life.” Nine months later, the paired had planned to go their separate ways as Jess left for a work assignment in Tokyo, but instead, they decided to get married.
