Growing up, barbershops were “a place of stress” for Everett Leroy Long Jr. “They’re super hyper masculine areas,” he said, that didn’t always make him feel at ease as a queer man.

But a barbershop is where his love story with Fred Otis Smith Jr. began in October 2015.

Mr. Long, then a part-time instructor at the University of Georgia, and Mr. Smith, who was working as an assistant professor at the University of California, Berkeley, were each getting a haircut at Brown’s Barber Shop in Athens, Ga., when Mr. Long’s barber suggested that the two meet because they had similar careers.

“We kept it very professional,” said Mr. Smith, who graduated from Harvard and holds a law degree from Stanford University. A graduate of Wake Forest University, Mr. Long received a master’s degree in journalism and mass communications and a Ph.D. in health behavior and promotion from the University of Georgia.

They later connected on LinkedIn but didn’t see one another again until January 2017, at a mutual friend’s birthday party in Atlanta, where each had moved by then.

The men, both now 40, struck up a conversation and exchanged contact information — this time, beyond LinkedIn. Afterward, they intermittently went to dinners, musicals and parties together as friends.

Three years later, they had what they now consider their first date, in May 2020. They had been speaking over FaceTime since the start of the pandemic that year, and when Mr. Long found out that Mr. Smith had no plans for his birthday that month, he set up a picnic at John C. Howell Park with cocktails, sandwiches, speakers and Scrabble.

“Afterward, Fred sent me this message that said, ‘I don’t know if this is a growing friendship or romance, but I like getting to know you and where it’s going,’” Mr. Long said. “That made me reflect: ‘Why would I do something so romantic for a friend?’ So we started spending more intentional time together.”

Their romance deepened in the months that followed, in part because of how each comforted the other during the Black Lives Matter protests in the summer of 2020. On one particularly emotional night, Mr. Long, who lived on a street in Atlanta where protests were concentrated, stayed over at Mr. Smith’s apartment.

[Click here to binge read this week’s featured couples.]

That night, Keisha Lance Bottoms, former mayor of Atlanta, “gave a passionate speech — her ‘if you care about this city, go home’ speech,’” Mr. Smith said. “We watched it, and we didn’t really talk about it. In some ways, we didn’t need to, because there was this sense that we both were feeling something very similar.”

In November 2020, Mr. Long commissioned a painting of Brown’s Barber Shop, which was originally meant to be a birthday gift for Mr. Smith. But by the time it was completed in April 2021, Mr. Long said he “just had this feeling that this is no longer a birthday present,” adding, “It’s much deeper than that.”

That May Mr. Long proposed to Mr. Smith, presenting him with the painting in lieu of a ring.

The piece is meaningful to the couple for many reasons, Mr. Long said, which include a shared “love of and habit of collecting art.” Mr. Smith grew up in Athens, the location of the barbershop, and Mr. Long, who grew up in Philadelphia, called Athens “a formative place” in his life. The barbershop’s address on “Hot Corner,” a section in Athens bustling with Black businesses, is also historically significant.

“But most of all, the fact that we met each other at, of all places, a barbershop felt ironic,” added Mr. Long, who called the space “one of the Blackest, most masculine and most beloved institutions of the Black community.”

In March, they moved in together at Mr. Smith’s apartment in Midtown Atlanta. Mr. Long now works as a health marketing strategy director at the Atlanta office of the advertising agency Brunet-García. Mr. Smith is a professor at Emory Law School.

On Sept. 10, they were wed before 155 guests at the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center by Supreme Court Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor, for whom Mr. Smith had clerked.

The museum was between exhibits the weekend of the wedding, so the grooms curated their own exhibition that showcased 25 pieces from their art collection, with a theme of Black, queer and Atlanta-connected artists, and 11 photos of the couple taken by a friend. As guests walked into the ceremony, they passed an easel displaying their barbershop painting.

The reception that followed featured a performance by the drag queen Lena Lust. “It was a really joyful day,” Mr. Smith said. “More than I ever could have imagined.”