Falling for ‘the Same Kind of Weird’

Jessica Rose Papilla’s older sister, Noelle Papilla, thought her Starbucks co-worker, Michael Leopold Burnett, might be the perfect match for her sister.

Mr. Burnett began working at the coffee shop in Milwaukee, where Ms. Papilla’s sister was his shift supervisor and trainer, in May 2009. By that summer, she started thinking he and her sister were “the same kind of weird,” as she put it. She began telling each about the other.

Three months later, Ms. Papilla started working at the same Starbucks. But she was a closer and Mr. Burnett was an opener. The two never crossed paths.

“We exchanged notes — first about the goings on of the store and eventually little hellos and doodles,” Ms. Papilla said. But one day in February 2010, “I was closing, Michael came in, and that was it,” Ms. Papilla said. “Love at first sight.”

The next month, the two saw the band the Magnetic Fields at the Pabst Theater in Milwaukee. “At some point, Michael fell asleep,” Ms. Papilla said of their first time hanging out. “I studied through the opener. It was like we were so comfortable; we didn’t have to pretend.”

They continued to exchange notes and to have “hangouts here and there,” said Ms. Papilla, who was busy as an undergraduate at Marquette University in Milwaukee. It wasn’t until May 2011 that the two spent time together more regularly.