This post was originally published on this site

Vows

By SARA OLKON

Seven years ago, Austin Cook walked into a barbecue potluck filled with strangers in downtown Chicago. Love was not at the top of his mind.

Mr. Cook, a shy piano player from Kansas City, Mo., had recently moved to the city to explore musical theater.

It would take him some time to find his footing. As an introvert, he spent much of his childhood practicing the piano or immersed in a painting. At 19, he interned in the art department at Walt Disney World, but once his bosses learned that he was a gifted pianist, they let him perform for theme park guests. Mr. Cook was hooked.

Despite learning to love the stage, Mr. Cook, lanky with a gentle, reticent manner, always felt awkward in social situations, especially when it came to meeting women. “As a performer, I am confident,” he said. “When it’s just me, it’s Austin. I start to feel weird.”

The afternoon of the potluck was no exception. Mr. Cook’s roommate, Brian-Alwyn Newland, a performing arts graduate student, was one of the hosts. That afternoon, he introduced Mr. Cook to some of his classmates, including his close friend Adrienne Walker, a vocalist and actress with a toothy smile. Ms. Walker, a native of Jonesboro, Ga., radiates warmth and a matter-of-fact directness.

Mr. Cook, now 29, was struck by her looks, poise and kindness. He was impressed to learn that she was studying classical voice and loved opera, passions he shared.

Nothing came of the encounter.

Ms. Walker, now 30, remembered meeting Mr. Cook and thinking that he looked sharp that night in a 1970s-style auburn-colored leather jacket. Her initial impression didn’t go much deeper. He was quiet. She wasn’t blown away.

Mr. Cook’s and Ms. Walker’s lives continued to intersect through Mr. Newland. Their circle narrowed further when Ms. Walker, who had come to Chicago to train as an opera singer, decided to instead pursue musical theater.

By their second year as friends, Mr. Cook realized that he was completely taken by Ms. Walker, drawn to her sensitivity and concern for others.

They saw each other regularly. He would help her rehearse her songs for a show. They also connected over music and the fact that both were raised in religious families.

There was the time she watched a YouTube video of Jeff Buckley singing the Leonard Cohen song, “Hallelujah.” She thought of Mr. Cook, and excitedly texted him, suggesting that he should consider doing a YouTube video of the song.

Encouraged by her text, he casually suggested hanging out. His intentions got lost through their phones.

“I am very literal,” Ms. Walker said.

He agonized and stalled for a year before making a more unequivocal move, convinced as he was that Ms. Walker would have no interest. Instead, he continued to text, sometimes vaguely suggesting a plan. Often, he wouldn’t follow up.

“I was so scared of rejection,” said Mr. Cook, whose first and only serious relationship before dating Ms. Walker ended a few months after he moved to Chicago, broken by the strains of long-distance dating.

Ms. Walker had more confidence about love. She started dating in high school. She knew what she didn’t want: another boyfriend like the one she had in college, who would complain when her glee club rehearsals went late. Before Mr. Cook, Ms. Walker briefly dated a jazz musician in Chicago.

In May 2011, Mr. Cook made his intentions obvious. He invited Ms. Walker to be his date at a Chicago theater awards event. A couple of days before the awards ceremony, Ms. Walker began to feel nervous. She bought a black gown for the event. “I think this is a date,” she told her mother over the phone.

Mr. Cook picked Ms. Walker up in his grandfather’s pristine white 1986 Chrysler LeBaron convertible, with a red leather interior.

It was a date, and a rousing success.

“There was an ease,” Ms. Walker said, describing their into-the-dawn conversations, in which they both opened up about family, music and their dreams for the future. “It was clear that he had his eyes on me and was waiting for a chance to share himself with me.”

Both said that it was immediately clear that they would start dating.

“We talked about God, the cosmos, the meaning of life,” Mr. Cook said.

The two grew close. But by later that summer, Mr. Cook had been offered a spot as understudy for the role of Jerry Lee Lewis for the national tour of the musical “Million Dollar Quartet.” A month into the two-year tour, the two were felled by a sore lack of communication. There were a lot of arguments about not responding to texts or returning calls, he said.

Adding to the complication of long-distance communication, Ms. Walker sometimes must refrain from speaking to rest her vocal cords between performances. Instead of words, she responds with an “uh-huh” or a whistle.

Eventually, they broke up. “We needed to think about this,” Ms. Walker said. “Whatever we were doing wasn’t working.”

Mr. Cook said he felt ill-equipped to express himself and hated talking on the phone. “I would just shut down and then we would just stop communicating,” he said.

They reconciled a week after not speaking. Ms. Walker had left it to Mr. Cook to get back in touch if he was ready to step up his game. “I had to figure out, ‘Is this person worth it?’” he said.

They have remained steadfast ever since.

Ms. Walker is direct. She doesn’t enjoy confrontation, but speaks up when she believes it’s important. Mr. Cook, on the hand, is conflict averse.

They worked on learning how to argue, deal with conflict and remain close despite the physical distance and their different takes on the world.

They were tested about a year into their relationship while in New York, where a man started following the couple demanding cash. When they declined to help him, the man asserted that Ms. Walker was only with Mr. Cook “because he’s white and rich.”

“No woman wants to be called a gold digger,” Ms. Walker said, stung by the panhandler’s words. “I was very offended. Then to add a race component.”

She also felt let down when he failed to stick up for her with the panhandler. Mr. Cook, for his part, didn’t see any point in engaging further or risking an altercation.

Their dynamic is also their comfort. While he is soft-spoken, she can be high-strung and quick to be upset. She credits Mr. Cook’s nurturing, tranquil manner for calming her down. “He knows that I overthink a lot,” she said. “He has the right thing to say.”

For now, their careers are their shared focus. It was during her time on a national tour of “Dirty Dancing” that Ms. Walker learned she had won the role of the lioness Nala in “The Lion King” on Broadway. She made her debut in July.

In October 2014, Mr. Cook surprised Ms. Walker when he got down on one knee and proposed to her on a quiet Monday at the Chicago Botanic Garden in Glencoe, Ill. They had talked about marriage, but Ms. Walker said she still was pleasantly caught off guard.

“It sort of crept up on me,” Ms. Walker said, explaining how their commitment for each other grew over time, cemented in small gestures and their easy compatibility. She added that Mr. Cook always seemed to be one step ahead of her in feeling certain.

With their wedding less two months away, and Ms. Walker having been unexpectedly called to Broadway’s stages, Mr. Cook took over much of the final planning. He dealt with the invitations and organized their relocation to an apartment in Prospect Park, Brooklyn.

They were married Sept. 12 at Firehouse Chicago, the former home of Engine Company 70, a three-minute walk from where they used to live in Chicago. They married on a clear and sunny Monday, the day of the week when theaters typically go dark.

Ms. Walker’s brother, Sedric Walker, who lives in Jonesboro, Ga., and was ordained by the Cornerstone Church of the Living Faith in Atlanta, officiated in front of 42 guests.

They sat in a garden flowing with ivy and with rustic Mason jars filled with pink and purple rose petals. A Chicago-based all-female string quartet, 4Spiel, performed “Musetta’s Waltz” from Puccini’s “La Bohème” as the bride and groom met on the stone wedding platform.

The next day, Mr. Cook headed east, with a rented truck holding the contents of their Chicago lives. He insisted that Ms. Walker fly to New York; she was due back on Broadway the following day.

Despite the unforgiving schedule, the ceremony felt warm, loving and deliberate, much like the two people joining their lives together.

“They both have the same dream,” said the groom’s father, Mikl Cook of Jefferson City, Mo. “Adrienne got there first with Broadway. But Austin will be right behind her.”