On Spring Street in Lower Manhattan, tourists line up for a cronut. A group of 20-somethings play pickleball on a field nearby. Along the sidewalk, couples walk hand in hand, squinting into the sun on an unusually warm winter morning.
Also, thousands of creators are looking for content. One group in particular, however, takes the (wedding) cake for most likely to capture your heart.
Jeremy Bernstein, Victor Lee, and Aaron Feinberg run Meet Cutes NYC, which publishes micro-portraits of modern love in Tik Tok, Instagram, Facebook and YouTube. Each video begins with Mr. Bernstein asking, “Excuse me, are you a couple?” as the team approaches a pair of unsuspecting lovers with their camera. “Would you like to tell me the story of how you first met?”
The following romantic stories offer a glimpse into the funny and sometimes unpredictable way love plays: blind dates, first glances, second chances, airplanes, arranged marriages, May-December, baseball games, book clubs, punk shows, past lives, summer nights, summer camps, sign language, funerals, dorms, discos, dating apps, DMs, car washes, karaoke, subways, sunsets, butterflies, pizzas, ice cream.
The trio of 29-year-olds were not always romantic, nor very active on social media. That changed when Mr. Lee and Mr. Feinberg, who met as children in Port Washington, New York, connected with Mr. Bernstein, a childhood friend of Mr. Feinberg’s on the Upper West Side. Mr. Lee — who came up with the original idea — was inspired by couples in his own life as well as his appreciation of man-on-the-street interviews.
In February 2023, they shared theirs first videoand now, a year later, they have 3.7 million followers – including Gwyneth Paltrow, Jennifer Garner and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez – across platforms, with viewers from countries as far away as Nepal, Saudi Arabia and Australia.
On a recent Saturday morning, I walked into Meet Cutes NYC as they were interviewing couples on the street. We met at Ground Support, a cafe in SoHo, and after introductions, the trio set up on the sidewalk outside. “We like pairings with coffee,” Mr. Bernstein said. “They’re more likely to say yes.”
I had been warned not to expect much during the session (and that it could be cunning sometimes to tell if two people were actually together). But the first three couples who passed agreed to do the interview. “It doesn’t usually happen that way,” said Mr. Bernstein, who now finds talking to random people second nature. He had spent the past four years selling renewable energy on the street behind a folding table.
In the first months of the project, the three friends often left work during lunch breaks and on weekends to shoot videos. “We got a tip that we should post once a day” to maximize online engagement, Mr. Feinberg said, “so we tried to stick to that.”
Eventually, Mr. Lee and Mr. Bernstein transitioned into full-time content creation for Meet Cutes NYC. These days, they film about five times a week, sometimes as a trio, sometimes as a couple. And sometimes it’s just Mr. Bernstein, who has gained a bit of a reputation as the only voice behind the camera. Passing by the group, a woman called out, “Your voice is iconic!” Mr. Feinberg turned to me, smiling, and said, “He really did win ‘most distinctive voice’ in his high school yearbook.”
In each video, Mr. Bernstein tends to stick to a set of questions: How did you first meet? What is your favorite thing about your partner? What’s the secret to X years together? Before settling on these, Mr. Feinberg said, they tried many different constellations of questions: “We used to even ask people’s zodiac signs!”
That day in Soho, Mr. Feinberg stopped mid-sentence several times, his eyes fixed on a potential couple, often across the street. “Funky hair” or “cool outfit,” he’d say before darting in between cars idling at traffic lights beckoning Mr. Bernstein to meet him on the block. (“We always say we’re going to get hit by a car one day,” Mr. Lee said with a laugh.)
Even after hours of interviews, only a few excerpts from each session are deemed fit for posting, Mr. Feinberg said. The physical jumble of city streets—like the sudden siren of an ambulance—can instantly render an entire interview useless. “You get pretty sensitive to noise doing this job,” Mr Lee said, as a saxophone blared across the street.
The trio shoot most of their videos in Manhattan or Brooklyn, although in November they traveled to the UK together. “The Londoners were much harder to stop,” Mr Lee said. “So many couples had met in a pub that we had to make one their pension.” They have also shot in Spain in October and South Florida in December, and hope to make trips to other countries with many English speakers such as India, Ghana and Singapore.
Once the download is complete, each team member independently reviews the previous week’s recordings (one Google Drive contains more than 1,000 interviews) and then meets on Zoom to present their favorites. If at least two of them agree to present a particular pair, the final version is scheduled for posting.
The three work cohesively as a team, although Mr. Feinberg admits there is a fourth, unofficial member who plays a role. “My mom updates me every day about what’s going on in the comments,” he said, smiling and pointing to a series of paragraph-long texts.
While they are grateful for all the positive feedback they receive from viewers, some responses, in particular, have highlighted how the impact of their work can transcend the online world into the real world. “One time,” Mr. Feinberg said, “a woman messaged us and explained that by watching our videos, she realized she was in an abusive relationship and that what was happening was not the norm.”
To end the day, I asked the guys, all of whom have romantic partners, if hearing stories about couples of all ages and stages has translated into changes in their own relationships.
Mr Lee, who has been with his partner for five years, said the most useful advice often focuses not on how to find love, but how to keep it. “It’s easy to fall into a routine and just sit on the couch,” she said. “So it’s important to never stop appointment your partner.”
“There is not one direct line to love,” Mr. Feinberg added. “Everyone needs something different from their partner.” And Mr. Bernstein echoed the sentiment: “We’ve seen open arrangements, long-distance relationships and everything in between.”
“In other words, there’s no way to show a relationship,” he said. As one watches the spectrum of stories in Meet Cutes NYC, it is evident that this, like love, is true.