The cardboard cup of mashed potatoes Gustavo Chagas Lopes handed Luke John Robinson III on Oct. 11, 2021, was not meant to be an aphrodisiac. But for Mr. Robinson, something in the way Mr. Lopes, then the manager of the Brooklyn restaurant Sally Roots, had passed them off was spellbinding.
“Gustavo is just so striking,” Mr. Robinson said. “He’s such a beautiful, beautiful man that when he reached across the bar to give me my order, I struggled to say, ‘My name is Luke and I’m here for a pickup.’”
That struggle was compounded by the reason he had ordered the grown-up equivalent of baby food in the first place: His mouth was killing him. On his way home from wisdom tooth surgery, “I was in a hell of a lot of pain,” he said. “And I was starving.”
Even so, the man who had captivated him with a cup of comfort food lingered in his thoughts. “I knew I wanted to know him more,” he said. “I knew it was destiny.”
Mr. Robinson, 28, of Ridgewood, Queens, is a sales representative at the pharmaceutical company Astellas. Mr. Lopes, 34, of Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, is now a bartender at Yours Sincerely in Bushwick; he is also a freelance photographer. After the takeout exchange at the now-closed Sally Roots, Mr. Robinson found Mr. Lopes on Hinge, then followed him on Instagram. At the beginning of November, after a flurry of messages, they met for pizza at Ops in Bushwick.
In their messages, Mr. Robinson hadn’t mentioned the mashed potatoes encounter. When he brought it up at Ops, though, he was pleased to find that he wasn’t the only one who remembered. “Of course I remember you,” Mr. Lopes told him. He didn’t elaborate at the time on his first impression, which wasn’t as favorable as Mr. Robinson’s. “My first thought when I saw he had ordered just mashed potatoes was, ‘Who is this weirdo?’”
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Mr. Lopes grew up in Vitoria, Brazil. He graduated with a bachelor’s degree in journalism and communications from Faculdades Integradas São Pedro. He visited New York for the first time in 2015 for 10 days, and, two years later, when he was living in São Paulo, determined he was meant to be a New Yorker.
“I sold everything in my apartment and bought a plane ticket,” he said. “For me, there was this very familiar feeling about New York.”
Mr. Robinson grew up in Philadelphia, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in political science from Temple University. After graduation, he moved to Queens for his job.
Despite Mr. Robinson’s instant crush, six months of dating passed before they became a couple. “I think we both appreciated getting to know each other before getting attached,” Mr. Lopes said.
But when Mr. Robinson flew to Istanbul for a friend’s wedding in April 2022, the pace of their romance picked up. “It took me by surprise, how much I missed him,” Mr. Lopes said. The night of Mr. Robinson’s return, Mr. Lopes rushed to his apartment. “I felt the urge to say, ‘I’m in love with you.’”
They had been a committed couple for more than a year when Mr. Robinson broached the idea of getting married over dinner at Margot, a restaurant in Fort Greene, Brooklyn.
At first, Mr. Lopes wasn’t sure marriage was something he wanted. But his timing, when he decided to propose to Mr. Robinson on Sept. 23, 2023, became meaningful.
“It had been an evolving discussion when Gustavo surprised me with a ring,” Mr. Robinson said. His older sister, Ashley Robinson, was the first person they called with the news. “She was over the moon for us.”
But the following day, Ms. Robinson, 32, of Philadelphia, died of an accidental drug overdose. The couple had planned to marry in December, but “it was so tragic and so sad,” Mr. Lopes said. “Luke needed time to go through the motions of grieving with his family.”
On Feb. 24, Mr. Lopes and Mr. Robinson were married before 70 guests at the Annex in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Their friend Rebecca Gonzalez, a minister ordained through American Marriage Ministries, officiated. “Ashley was there in our hearts,” Mr. Robinson said. Their flower girl was her 6-year-old daughter.
Before guests left the Annex, they passed a table set with Brazilian wedding cookies. The name of the cookies in Portuguese, Bem Casado, translates to “happily married.”
Mashed potatoes might have been just as auspicious, Mr. Robinson said. But “we put them on the dinner menu.”
