Work, Work, Work. Love, Love, Love.

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Work, Work, Work. Love, Love, Love.

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When Stephanie Horbaczewski met Gordon Clemons, romance was the last thing on her mind.

At the time, January 2014, Ms. Horbaczewski was the chief executive of StyleHaul, a digital, social and multiplatform network focusing on global beauty, fashion and lifestyle, in Los Angeles. She worked around the clock, creating, traveling and expanding the business, which she co-founded. She has 21,000 Instagram followers and more than half-a-million YouTube subscribers.

Ms. Horbaczewski, a former marketing director for Saks Fifth Avenue, had three work-related events to attend that night at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. She spoke with Mr. Clemons for fewer than 10 minutes, but she took note of his sense of humor and investment background, which had a focus on technology and health care.

“I was close to selling my company and constantly crossing the U.S. with zero free time, but Gordon was investing in start-ups, so I wanted to stay in touch,” said Ms. Horbaczewski, now 38, and so devoted to work that she had not dated anyone seriously since her student days at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn.

Mr. Clemons, now 42, was also busy, creating a Los Angeles company to manage his family’s investments, and going through a stressful divorce after a 15-year marriage. Yet he couldn’t resist having a quick chat with Ms. Horbaczewski.

“It was a conversation you could have hundreds of times a day, but I’m a guy, and I thought Stephanie was insanely hot,” Mr. Clemons said.

Other than some text messages back and forth in which Ms. Horbaczewski asked investment questions, they didn’t talk much for about seven months.

At the end of the summer, Mr. Clemons asked Ms. Horbaczewski to have dinner at the Polo Lounge in the Beverly Hills Hotel. It was a celebration of Ms. Horbaczewski’s then-recent collaboration with the RTL Group, the European entertainment company that would eventually buy StyleHaul in November 2014 for $153 million and keep her on as chief executive and president.

“I know the reality of selling a company is like a proctology exam,” Mr. Clemons said. (He had done merger and acquisition work at CorVel Corporation, a health care management services company co-founded by his father.) “I thought I could help, but at the time I had no comprehension of the magnitude of success that Stephanie and StyleHaul had.”

The dinner was a mix and match of perfect laughter and imperfect manners.

To start, Ms. Horbaczewski took a business call that lasted nearly 30 minutes. “While this was a business dinner moving the needle,” Mr. Clemons said, “when she disappeared for that long I was really annoyed.”

She said she just wanted to get back to the table. “I wanted to end the work call and could not remember ever feeling that way before,” she said.

During dinner they talked nonstop about work (including advice from him about selling her company), his three children, his divorce, their love of family, fashion, travel and sports, and their entrepreneurial spirit.

“Gordon was amazingly funny, and we talked so long that we shut down the place,” she said. “I knew this was something, and I wanted to see him again.”

Mr. Clemons, intrigued with her quick wit, big personality and the excitement and flow of their conversation, texted her the next morning. The following week, he took her to a Drake and Lil Wayne concert in Newport Beach with other friends, including a woman who had recently lost her husband.

”I already thought Gordon was dashing, charming, fun and handsome, but that night I saw how easily he brings people together,” Ms. Horbaczewski said. “I liked that he was a comforting person.”

Mr. Clemons liked her positivity. “We were both lunatics during this chaotic time, but I liked how modest and unselfish she was,” he said. “And we could talk for hours, over tacos, about a wide range of subjects.”

Ms. Horbaczewski began receiving regular “good morning” texts from him. When Mr. Clemons learned that she had not stored his number in her contacts, he grabbed her phone. From then on, she received daily texts from “Sexiest Man Alive.”

“Even at this early stage, Stephanie told us that Gordon was the one,” said her father, Henry Horbaczewski, a retired general counsel for Reed Elsevier, the business information company. “Up until then, she was more career oriented, but it was a highly interesting time for her. And Gordon was who she needed.”

Despite her nonstop travel schedule, the relationship deepened because they made time for each other when she was home in Los Angeles. They rode bikes, dined out and watched football (he is a University of Southern California fan, and Ms. Horbaczewski, who grew up in Massachusetts, loves the New England Patriots). They also shared a passion for clothes.

Ms. Horbaczewski began to show Mr. Clemons crazy colors and patterns, which he relished (for one formal event he wore a purple dinner jacket). She sent him eccentric ties, jackets and funky shoes with pop (they favor neon), which he embraced with gusto.

They also sought adventure. In Bora Bora to celebrate Mr. Clemons’s 40th birthday, the couple swam with sharks and rays, then jumped in with larger, more intimidating Manta rays. “While Gordon is a fun, do-anything kind of guy who other women could not keep up with, I have never seen him do something like this,” said Michael Saverien, who was among the friends who also went on the trip. “But Steph gives him a run for his money, and allows him to express himself on a different channel.”

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Mr. Clemons wanted to be sure that Ms. Horbaczewski would be around and fit seamlessly into his family circle before he took the relationship to the next level. “It was hard for me to see her travel all the time, and with three kids I couldn’t accompany her as much as I would have liked,” he said.

She found ways to get to know his children when they were with him. She made gingerbread houses during the holiday season at the home of Mr. Clemons’s parents in Los Angeles. “Her gingerbread house was the most beautiful of all,” said his mother, Marie Clemons. “And she re-energized everyone in the family.”

Ms. Horbaczewski also began dancing and singing country music with Mr. Clemons’s son Jack, 9, talking music and fashion with his daughter, Ryan, 12, and engaging in social media and digital life with Trenton, 22, his son from an earlier relationship.

“I know being a stepmom is challenging and unrewarding, but Steph embraced it like a dynamo,” Mr. Clemons said. “Goofy, silly stuff comes natural to her, and my kids like it.”

Said Ms. Horbaczewski: “The more I got to know the kids, the closer Gordon and I grew as a couple. I saw that he was a big kid at heart and a great father, like my own dad.”

Mr. Clemons knew he was happier with Ms. Horbaczewski than without her, and as the relationship progressed, he was blown away by her thoughtfulness. “She does amazing little things, like each Valentine’s Day she leaves 14 cards for two weeks,” he said.

They soon began discussing marriage and working on a start-up project together. In January, they got a pair of English bulldog puppies, which they named Brady and Manning. By last summer, Mr. Clemons knew the time had come.

During a business trip to Germany last September, they decided to add St.- Tropez to the itinerary to celebrate her birthday. While there, he hired a helicopter to fly them from the Hôtel Byblos to the tel du Cap-Eden-Roc on the French Riviera. When they were at lunch, sitting at a table overlooking the Mediterranean, Mr. Clemons asked Ms. Horbaczewski to accompany him down the cliff toward the water. A photographer was waiting as Mr. Clemons dropped to one knee and said to Ms. Horbaczewski, “You are my best friend, my love, my partner in crime, will you marry me?”

“I was so surprised and sobbing that I asked him to repeat it,” she said.

On Aug. 19, there were more surprises when the couple invited 167 friends and family members to a cocktail party at the Beverly Hills Hotel, where they had their first dinner together.

In the garden, highlighted by a gazebo decorated with a lush blend of white orchids and roses, guests enjoyed appetizers and drinks while listening to a jazz singer perform. Then, a choir that had been pretending to be guests started singing Jefferson Starship’s “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now.”

The cocktail party had suddenly become a wedding.

Ms. Horbaczewski, who had changed into a Berta Bridal gown with crystal- encrusted flowers, was walked down the aisle by her parents to meet Mr. Clemons, decked out in a hot-pink Tom Ford dinner jacket.

“I had ideas about tonight,” said one guest, Jeremy Houghton, a tech employee at StyleHaul. “But I didn’t know exactly what was going on — and nobody I talked to did, either. I thought it was really cool.”

The bride’s brother Nick Horbaczewski, the founder of the Drone Racing League, was ordained a Pastafarian minister (which promotes a lighthearted view of religion) to perform the short nontraditional nuptials. He told guests that his sister was a force of nature, “brilliant and charming, a talented artist, entrepreneur, an unapologetic New England Patriots fan and a fashionista with an innate energy level that is simply on a different plane from a normal human being.”

He explained that Mr. Clemons is accomplished and compassionate himself but with an energy level that perfectly balances his sister’s. “Seeing the joy you bring her,” he said, “experiencing your sense of humor and fast-car rallies, hearing about your talent as an investor and, above all, witnessing the unbelievable love you have for your children and the dedication you show them, I can stand here and say for certain that I would take you over Tom Brady as a brother any day.”

Mr. Horbaczewski then told the bride and groom: “Throughout our lives my father has only given us one piece of advice about marriage: ‘Marry the person you cannot live without.’”

As the couple said their vows and kissed for the first time as husband and wife, cheers rang out and the guests-turned-choir-members performed “There’s No Such Thing as a Broken Heart” by Old Dominion.

“Stephanie is a bundle of contradictions with a sentimental side and deep love for family,” her father said. “We love her latest acquisition.”

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