Frankie James Grande didn’t know he was persona non grata with Hale Leon when he introduced himself at the Los Angeles club Oil Can Harry’s in February 2019.

A regular at the club, Mr. Leon was used to ample real estate on its dance floor. But that night Mr. Grande and his friends invaded his turf, forcing Mr. Leon onto the club’s stage to strut and stomp.

“Frankie brought his whole gang of West Hollywood gays that night,” said Mr. Leon, 29, an actor and Twitch streamer. “I was kind of mad.”

His irritation, though, wasn’t what caused him to beg off when Mr. Grande, who had admired his moves onstage and approached him in the bathroom with a flirty nice-to-meet-you, asked Mr. Leon to dance.

“I said to him, ‘I’m a nerd,’” Mr. Leon said. “I’m not a flirt, I’m not good at any of that.”

Then Mr. Grande surprised him. “‘I’m a nerd, too,’” he told Mr. Leon.

Mr. Grande, 39, is an actor, L.G.B.T.Q. rights activist and the older brother of the singer Ariana Grande. He is also, like Mr. Leon, a serious gamer. At Oil Can Harry’s, they connected over a mutual appreciation of Zelda and Super Mario, which led to a late-night make-out in Mr. Grande’s car.

By the time both men drove home — Mr. Grande to Bel Air and Mr. Leon to Studio City — Mr. Grande was feeling triumphant. He had accidentally proved to Mr. Leon, who was skeptical, that he really was nerdy.

“As soon as I turned my car on, the last song I was playing, the theme from ‘Star Wars,’ started blasting,” Mr. Grande said. “Hale was like, ‘You can leave this on.’”

Right then, Mr. Grande added, “I knew he was the one.”

Mr. Leon knew a month later, when Mr. Grande formally asked him to be his boyfriend after a night of loaded spuds at the Baked Potato, a Los Angeles jazz club (that serves baked potatoes).

At first, Mr. Leon said, he “couldn’t get across my head that someone” like Mr. Grande “could really enjoy the same things I do,” which include not just video games but potatoes, his favorite food. “I was happily proven wrong.”

Said Mr. Grande, “We felt like each other’s soul mates.”

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When Covid shut the world down the following year, Mr. Leon and Mr. Grande, along with two of Mr. Grande’s friends, moved in with Mr. Grande’s mother, Joan Grande, in Bel Air. “It was sort of like a clown house,” Mr. Grande said. “It was filled to the brim with people and games and activities.”

For Mr. Leon, it was paradise. “My happiest moments are sitting down with family, playing board games,” he said.

In September 2020, the two moved into a home of their own in Beverly Hills, Calif. They became engaged the following year, on June 13, 2021.

Wanting to do something out of the ordinary, Mr. Grande proposed at Dreamscape, a virtual reality attraction in Los Angeles. He also wanted it to be a surprise. So he told Mr. Leon that the cluster of friends and family he had invited — who included Mr. Grande’s mother and sister and Mr. Leon’s aunt, Carolyn Pinto — were there to celebrate Mr. Grande’s four-year anniversary of becoming sober on June 16.

As their avatars wandered a virtual forest, banners reading “Will you marry me?” dropped from the trees, and Mr. Grande, and his avatar, to one knee.

“It was a crazy amount of emotion,” Mr. Leon said. “All this happiness came rushing in.”

The couple had originally planned to marry at Walt Disney World on May 7, but changed course because they were unhappy with the company’s initial response to a Florida state education law that critics call “Don’t Say Gay.”

“They didn’t come out against it until it was too little, too late,” Mr. Grande said.

On May 4, they were wed at the Grande family’s home in Boca Raton, Fla., before 50 guests, all of whom had taken Covid tests. Joan Grande, who became a Universal Life minister for the occasion, officiated after Mr. Grande walked down the aisle with his maternal grandmother, Marjorie Grande, 96, and Mr. Leon with Ms. Pinto and his mother, AnneMarie Pinto.

Their new date had its benefits. May 4 is “Star Wars” Day, which the couple nodded to by dressing their dog, Appa, who served as a ring bearer, in a Darth Vader costume. “The Imperial March” was also a part of the wedding day soundtrack.

“It gave us the chance to wink at something nerdy,” Mr. Grande said. “May the Fourth be with you.”