It never bothered Benjamin Andrew Krauss in the least if Shana Gabrielle Mansbach took a call from Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House, while she was out to dinner, then dashed off to write a letter or a speech.
“This happened not infrequently,” said Mr. Krauss, 40, who knew the situation well. “That’s the nature of what we do.”
The two Washington speakers had never met or heard from each other before connecting on the dating app Hinge in July 2020, during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic.
“He was in his bubble, I was in mine,” said Ms. Mansbach, 31. “He’s done an amazing job mostly on the campaign field. I do government stuff.”
Until 2022, Ms. Mansbach had worked as a senior communications adviser and speechwriting director for Ms. Pelosi. He is now a speechwriter and senior adviser to Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken.
“We were two-way,” said Ms. Mansbach, who graduated cum laude with a degree in politics, philosophy and economics from the University of Pennsylvania.
Mr. Krauss, who has a degree in government from Dartmouth, is the managing director of Fenway, a speech writing and communications firm in Washington. In 2018, he was the chief political speech editor for Joseph R. Biden Jr. In addition, he has served as a speaker for the presidential campaigns of Hillary Clinton and Mr. Biden.
“I knew we were going to hit it off and start dating,” Ms. Mansbach said. As they texted and texted each other, Mrs. Mansbach finally decided it was best to keep her distance for now. After a five-year relationship ended in May 2020, she was in no rush to jump into another.
“She was very engaging, then she would disappear temporarily,” said Mr. Krauss, who patiently waited two months for their first date.
In September 2020, he rode a Capital Bikeshare bike to his condominium in Northeast Washington. After he greeted her with a big hug, they had cocktails on the roof of his dollhouse.
For the next six hours, they never spoke, but stopped enough at the end of the night for a kiss.
“It was a really good first kiss,” she said, and as she predicted they started seeing each other regularly.
A week later, he returned for his specialty “eggplant à la Ben,” he said, or eggplant parmesan. “The house smelled great.”
He loved to cook and prepared Eastern European dishes for her, such as stuffed cabbage and borscht with sour cream. Ms. Mansbach, who grew up in Columbia, used to make crab cakes and potato salad.
They took day trips to Washington, D.C., and in November he considered something much more exotic: a weeklong trip to Bora Bora.
After some hesitation and consultation with her friends and family, she agreed to go in December.
“I would wake up at 4 in the morning and sit outside and watch the sun come up,” she said, recalling her time working remotely.
In May 2021, during a 10-day trip, they drove through Georgia (the country, not the state), where he was for his first consulting job with a company that polled its president, Mikheil Saakashvili, and also stopped in eastern Kiev in Ukraine.
In the spring of 2022, they adopted Sasha, a rescue fox, and in July Ms. Mansbach moved into his apartment. “Any uncertainty evaporated,” he said.
Mr. Krauss supported her as she prepared for her first marathon, and on race day, in Philadelphia, he sprinted across town with her friends and family to cheer her on.
“It was in the 20s that day, with 50 mph gusts,” he said.
When they visited Mr. Krauss’ parents in Katonah, New York in January 2023, they found the perfect wedding venue 20 minutes away, Blue Hill at Stone Barns in Pocantico Hills, New York, and booked it before their engagement.
In February 2023, very much in character, he took off on a secret mission to Athens — his proposal.
“Her colleagues helped with the harassment,” he said, and with their help, he met her in Athens at the end of a weeklong tour of the European State Department.
A colleague had called to tell Mrs. Mansbach, who was about to sleep, that Mr. Blinken was going to toast the employees on the roof of their hotel — the Hotel Grande Britannia, which overlooked the Parthenon. So he got up there.
Instead, only Mr. Krauss was waiting for her and knelt down.
“I didn’t prepare a speech,” he said, and spoke from the heart.
They took “the long way home,” she said, celebrating in Berlin at a concert with her favorite violinist, Joshua Bell, and the next night with dinner in Paris.
On April 13, Cantor Laura Stein officiated at Blue Hill at Stone Barns, before 150 guests, while the couple stood under a hoop the same height her parents were married in.
“We know we’re heading into what promises to be a busy year,” Mr. Krauss said, “and we’re just happy to have each other.”