Michael Sin-Suarez was shocked when he overheard Kia Zalewski discussing one of his favorite ’80s movies. Neither of them anticipated that reciting dialogue from the film would later lead to romance.
It was the summer of 2005, and Kia Dawn Zalewski, a recent graduate of Florida State University with a bachelor’s degree in communications, landed a position in sales and marketing at Nikki Beach Miami, a luxury beach club. While working in the corporate office, she often crossed paths with the then-V.I.P. manager, Michael Anthony Sin-Suarez.
Each thought the other was attractive, but there was something else that caught their attention. “I came in one day and she was talking about ‘Grease 2’ with a co-worker,” Mr. Sin-Suarez, an ’80s movie aficionado, said. “No one knows ‘Grease 2’, but it was one of my favorite movies. She said a line from the movie and I said the following one.”
A year later, she left Nikki Beach to work for a public relations firm in Miami. But a surprise encounter would lead them back to each other. In September 2012, Ms. Zalewski was visiting friends in Marbella, Spain, and one of them turned out to be roommates with Mr. Sin-Suarez. He was by then a manager at Nikki Beach Marbella. After that trip, the two kept in touch.
In early January 2013, Mr. Sin-Suarez traveled to New York, where Ms. Zalewski was living, for a friend’s wedding. “Michael asked me to meet up with him in Rockefeller Center,” Ms. Zalewski said. She nearly declined.
“But I accepted and we had the most fun running around town,” she said, “drinking whiskey from a pocket flask and having far too many pickleback shots at tiny Midtown dive bars.”
A few weeks later, Ms. Zalewski reached out to Mr. Sin-Suarez, who was then a manager at Nikki Beach Resort & Spa Koh Samui in Thailand, to ask if he could pass on her résumé to a friend in Los Angeles, where she was looking to relocate.
While the call from Los Angeles never came, Ms. Zalewski was offered a job as the marketing lead at Nikki Beach in Thailand. “I had two days to take the offer and two weeks to empty my apartment and move my life to Koh Samui,” she said.
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The pair quickly became best friends over late nights in the office, post-work cocktails, and getting each other through occasional bouts of homesickness.
Over a year later, in October 2014, the two traveled to a work conference in Marbella. When the backpacking trip Ms. Zalewski planned fell through, Mr. Sin Suarez invited her to go to Rome with him. “We had an amazing time, even though things didn’t go as planned,” he said. “We missed flights because I miscalculated the times, but she was so easygoing and understanding. It was the best trip I’ve ever had.”
The couple officially began dating in 2015 when they moved together to oversee the Nikki Beach Bali location in Indonesia, where Ms. Zalewski was the marketing director and Mr. Sin-Suarez, who attended Johnson & Wales University for culinary studies, was the general manager. (The location has since closed.) “Since then, we’ve traveled around the world together,” Ms. Zalewski said.
In 2016, they moved back to Miami, where they still live today, and adopted a dog they named Lilo. Ms. Zalewski is now the senior marketing director for the Riviera Dining Group, a luxury hospitality company based in Miami, and Mr. Sin-Suarez is the general manager at Nikki Beach Miami.
Mr. Sin-Suarez had been plotting a proposal since 2019, but Covid threw a wrench into his planning. “Then in summer 2021, I suggested going to New York City to celebrate my birthday in September,” he said. The trip started with an unexpected gift from Mr. Sin-Suarez to Ms. Zalewski: a silver pocket flask engraved with the words “All roads lead to you’.”
Mr. Sin-Suarez then insisted on visiting Rockefeller Center, where he got down on one knee and proposed. They then “stopped into Midtown bars to toast with celebratory pickleback shots and danced the night away,” Ms. Zalewski said.
Ms. Zalewski, 39, and Mr. Sin-Suarez, 44, were married April 1 at Sydonie Mansion in Mount Dora, Fla. Ms. Zalewski’s older brother, Joel Zalewski, who was ordained by the American Marriage Ministries for the occasion, officiated the ceremony in front of 83 guests.
The wedding was the actualization of a dream for Mr. Sin-Suarez. “Back when Facebook was a big thing and before we were serious, I tagged Kia in a photo of Ralph Macchio and the actress who played his love interest in ‘Karate Kid,’” he said (that actress was Elisabeth Shue). “I wrote that I wished my life was like an ’80s movie, and, in fact, it’s been like a great ’80s movie with her.”