Kirby Matocha and Chase Edmunds’s wedding day, Feb. 15, was declared “Kirby and Chase Day” by John Whitmire, the Mayor of Houston, who was in attendance.
Everything seemed to be going wrong when Chase Vaughan Edmunds and Kirby Lynn Matocha met for their first official date at the Houston Zoo on Nov. 16, 2021.
Shortly before reaching the front gate, Mr. Edmunds’s cellphone, which held their digital tickets, died. But the two merely laughed it off. While the phone recharged at the gift shop, they strolled around the nearby reflecting pool and gardens. Then it started to rain. They simply huddled under an archway until it passed, after which they retrieved his then-charged phone.
“We had a lovely time at the zoo,” Ms. Matocha said. “I left home with straight hair and nerves, but returned with curly hair and a serious crush.” Not wanting the date to end, they meandered through the nearby Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and had ice cream at Jeni’s before calling it a day.
Although it was their first official date, they had actually met two weeks before. Mutual friends had set up a dinner at El Tiempo, a Mexican restaurant in Houston, on Sept. 16, 2021, to welcome Mr. Edmunds to the city. He had just relocated from Winston-Salem, N.C., to work for the law firm Bracewell after recently graduating from Wake Forest University School of Law.
“We joke that we fell in love over the fajita smoke,” Ms. Edmunds said.
The following week, the group went out for drinks. Mr. Edmunds left his keys behind at the bar and Ms. Matocha volunteered to return them to him, excited for the opportunity to see him again.
Mr. Edmunds said he didn’t leave them there deliberately. “I wish I was smart enough to lose my keys on purpose,” he said.
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