Megan Jericha Lerchenmuller was more than a little annoyed after first meeting Glenn Kyle Williams Josey in May 2018 at the construction site of the Glasshouse, an event space on 12th Avenue off the West Side Highway in New York.
“This is Megan, she just joined our team,” Mr. Josey, 46, the project architect, recalled a partner of the Glasshouse saying before a meeting got underway in a makeshift office space.
Mr. Josey then blurted out: “Oh, you’re here to take meeting notes,” under the impression the partner would bring someone along for the task.
Ms. Lerchenmuller simply glared at him. She had actually been hired by the Glasshouse a week earlier as a consultant for business strategy.
“I’m going to tuck that piece of information away,” she thought, realizing they would have to work together “a bunch” over the next three years.
Mr. Josey, embarrassed by his assumption, ended up taking the notes, in addition to conducting the meeting. He had been working for Kossar + Garry Architects at the time.
Ms. Lerchenmuller, 39, is now the chief operating officer of Elm by Atelier Collective, an event space in SoHo, which she collaborated on with Mr. Josey. She has a bachelor’s degree in economics from Northwestern and an M.B.A. from University of Pennsylvania.
Three weeks after they met they had a friendlier exchange when they joined the partner of the Glasshouse for drinks at the now-closed Clyde Frazier’s Wine and Dine bar, which was across the street in Manhattan’s Midtown West neighborhood.
“I found her very nice, very smart and highly intelligent,” said Mr. Josey, “and gorgeous.”
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He has a bachelor’s degree in architecture from the University of Oklahoma, and is now the owner of Glenn Josey Architecture. Mr. Josey, who became a Quaker in 2013, is a member of the Fifteenth Street Monthly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends in New York and the clerk of trustees for the New York Quarterly Meeting.
Once Covid hit in 2020, team meetings went virtual, and drinks with colleagues fell by the wayside.
In June 2021, in preparation of the Glasshouse opening in September, Mr. Josey visited the site everyday, and often checked to see if Ms. Lerchenmuller was around. As they chatted he suggested they go out for drinks again.
At the time, though, Ms. Lerchenmuller was on a juice cleanse.
“When is it over?” he asked, to which she replied matter-of-factly, “whenever we get drinks.”
That Friday, the pair had drinks at Ink 48, a bar across from the Glasshouse, and after a couple of hours dinner followed at a Mexican restaurant, owned by one of his childhood friends from Riverdale, the Bronx. She grew up in Laguna Beach, Calif.
At 1 a.m., he drove her home to the Upper West Side, and after two good night hugs he headed to his place in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn.
They still, with a laugh, call those seven hours together “a date non-date.”
Their first real date, albeit with her best friend, occurred a few days later over drinks in the V.I.P. lounge at the Glasshouse after she had just finished a photo shoot. They had a first kiss when they stepped into the south corridor.
The next day she left on a 10-day trip to visit friends in Detroit, and rented a car to celebrate a friend’s 40th birthday in Reynoldsburg, Ohio. She spoke on speaker phone to Mr. Josey the whole way there, which included a torrential downpour.
On July 4, he left his annual family barbecue early in Yeadon, Pa., to pick her up at LaGuardia Airport.
“I got a family ribbing,” he said, but got their seal of approval once he mentioned that she belonged to Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority. His mother, his sister, two cousins and Vice President Kamala Harris are also members.
“You shoulda led with that,” he recalled his sister and a cousin saying. He packed a picnic basket for Ms. Lerchenmuller, including his “Uncle Cal’s” famous ribs.
“We’ve been together ever since,” he said.
In August, a “six-month Megan tour” began, during which she met his family and friends, and took charge of the playlist during long car rides.
“He stopped listening to new music in the early 2000s,” she said, introducing Mr. Josey, who was into hip-hop and R&B, to singers like Frank Ocean.
Ms. Lerchenmuller became a fan of his cooking, especially his oven roasted truffle chicken and garlic rice. That fall he moved into her Upper West Side apartment.
In October, when they flew out to California for her friend’s wedding, he told her mother and grandmother that he would marry her.
On March 18, 2022, after taking her to the Guggenheim Museum, he proposed at her favorite bar — Bemelmans Bar at the Carlyle hotel. While the pianist played Stevie Wonder’s “Ribbon in the Sky,” he got down on one knee.
On April 27, the two were married in a self-uniting Quaker ceremony, with about 200 guests, at the Fifteenth Street Monthly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends.
Later at the Meeting house they enjoy potluck dishes, including curry goat and her mother’s lasagna and cupcakes. Leftovers went to the Friends homeless shelter and community dinner.
