On Long Drives and Sidelines, a Romance Blooms

Alexandra Paige Moreo and Matthew Alexander Gutierrez went on their first date in April 2017, when they were sophomores at Syracuse University. But they had already been on many “unofficial dates,” as they now refer to them, while working together for the student newspaper.

They both covered sports for The Daily Orange, where Mr. Gutierrez was a reporter and editor, and Ms. Moreo a photographer and photo editor. On long drives to games, they got to know each other, first as colleagues and friends. Somewhere along the way, Ms. Moreo grew more interested.

“I definitely thought he was handsome,” said Ms. Moreo, 27, who goes by Ally. “He has these radiant blue eyes.”

On reporting trips, there was often a third person in the car with them. “I think every single third person knew I was into Matthew,” Ms. Moreo said. However, “I don’t think Matthew knew I was into Matthew.”

When a mutual friend told Mr. Gutierrez how Ms. Moreo felt, he started texting her more often. After covering morning practices for the Syracuse football team, they began to get breakfast together, chatting before classes. They had their first official date at Pastabilities, a restaurant in Syracuse.

“It was just a very flowing date conversation,” said Mr. Gutierrez, also 27. “There was no awkwardness or anyone trying to impress anyone.”

Toward the end of the semester, on the eve of separate summer plans, they became a couple. For the Fourth of July, he visited her — and her large extended family — in Hampton Bays, N.Y. Though meeting her family was overwhelming at first, Mr. Gutierrez quickly connected with them. “Right away I could just see how tight-knit the family was,” he said. “There’s a lot of love.”

That weekend, they lay on the beach under the stars, talking late into the night. “I think it was those conversations that really solidified to me that this was my person,” Ms. Moreo said.

In 2019, they graduated from Syracuse with bachelor’s degrees — his in journalism and finance, hers in photojournalism. Ms. Moreo is now a program manager for the National Geographic Society’s Photo Camp, working remotely from Brooklyn and traveling to camps. Mr. Gutierrez is a freelance writer and journalist who has written for The New York Times, The Athletic and The Washington Post, among other publications.

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On a cross-country road trip in April 2021, Ms. Moreo knew she wanted to marry Mr. Gutierrez. For about three months, they drove down the East Coast, through the South, and to national parks in the West, in a 1995 camper van.

“That was in a very tight van, and we made it work,” Mr. Gutierrez said. Ms. Moreo recalled a particularly muggy, mosquito-filled night on Jekyll Island, Ga. “We were still having a lot of fun,” she said. In the summer of 2022, they moved in together in the Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn.

That December, Ms. Moreo was helping to clean her grandmother’s house in Queens when she found a box of old photos that belonged to her grandfather, taken in Italy when he served in the U.S. Army. She had never seen the photos before, and neither had many of her family members. She asked her grandmother about the people in the photos, and she brought out letters from them, some dating back to the 1960s. At the time, Ms. Moreo was in between jobs and looking for an adventure. She took the letters’ return address and started planning a trip to Italy to find her family.

Mr. Gutierrez went with her, seeing a special opportunity in the trip. In January 2023, on their first day in Rome, he told Ms. Moreo that they had a tour planned at the Spanish Steps — but there was no tour. At the steps, he got down on one knee and asked her to marry him. She was surprised, and said: “Of course.”

Later on the trip, they went to the address from the letters and knocked on the door, to no avail. But there happened to be a man walking by with a dog, and she asked if he knew her family. He called up his friend, whose last name is Morea, who came to meet them. She showed him the photos, and they realized they were related. They spent two days staying with her newfound family in Bari, sharing meals and stories.

The couple were married May 25 in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park by Jim Moreo, the bride’s father, who received a one-day New York State officiant license. Before 16 guests, they held a short ceremony under a tree, followed by an early dinner at Ottava, an Italian restaurant in Park Slope.

In more than seven years together, they have navigated school, graduation, jobs, distance, Covid and more. “There was never an upcoming stage of our life that we feared, because our life was constantly moving and changing,” Ms. Moreo said.

“It was just kind of like: Life is coming at us and we’ll take it together.” That became their mantra.