When Eric William Ostberg first saw the gray Alexandra O’Reilly, she was sitting on a couch in pajamas, legs curled down, hair still wet from a recent shower. And she, she was an Irish woman, and she was sipping her tea.
“I saw her for who she really was, and I loved everything I saw,” Ostberg said. “I call it love at first sight.”
It was August 2017 and he was in New York from Washington for a job interview. After that, he went drinking with his friend and was invited to his friend’s girlfriend’s apartment to see a movie. Ms. O’Reilly was my girlfriend’s roommate.
O’Reilly learned that his recently moved apartment in Washington was only a few blocks from where he lived. “And when he left my apartment, he texted a friend of mine and said he was interested in me.”
A few weeks later, when she was included in a group invited to spend Labor Day weekend on a boat at Ostberg’s parents’ home in Annapolis, Maryland, she didn’t hesitate.
“It was just fun and relaxing,” she said. “I felt like he was meant to be there. I was meant to be with him.”
They had their first kiss that Saturday after spending the day in Ostberg’s 30-foot center console motorboat. A few days later, they met again at a group event when he returned to New York City to watch Rafael Nadal play at the US Open.
“I really liked him,” said O’Reilly, 28, who graduated from the American University of Washington and is currently studying remotely for a master’s degree in education at the University of Mississippi. “He brought me this sense of peace.”
Soon after, she took a train to Washington, where he still lives, for her first one-on-one visit.
“He told me he loved me a month later, but I don’t think he meant to,” she said.
The triggering event, he said, was her selfless advice for the career decision he was facing: get the job he really wanted in Washington, pursue a long-distance relationship, or pursue another career. Move to New York for work and proximity attraction or to a new romantic interest.
“And Gray told me I had to do what I was passionate about and get that job in Washington, DC,” Arlington, Virginia. He graduated from Southern Methodist University.
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“It was an essential moment, being a good person and thinking of me,” he said. “It solidified that I was going to marry her.”
In September 2018, he got a job in New York and moved there. When both of her leases expired a year later, the two moved into an apartment together and soon got a little Goldendoodle puppy they named Laura.
Then came the pandemic.
The two stayed in New York until April and then went to his family’s home in Annapolis. There he remained for three months before they decided to travel to Montana, where he ended up staying in Big Sky for ten months.
“It was the first time she saw what the United States looked like,” said Ostberg, who proposed with her grandmother’s engagement ring during a trip to New Orleans in December 2020.
In April 2021, shortly after returning from Montana, she became the principal of the National Presbyterian School in Washington, and by September, the two were now together where they once lived as neighbors. Stranger.
The couple married on Dec. 30 at Annapolis County Circuit Courthouse, where the groom grew up. Sharon Burke, senior manager of the Clerk’s Office, moderated. On a larger scale, earlier that month on his December 10th, the Reverend Thomas F. Ryan held a religious service at St Peter and Paul Cathedral in Ennis, Ireland, in front of about 240 guests. presided over.
But Ostberg says it’s the small gestures that feed their relationship.
“When I go on trips like bachelorette parties, she’ll fill my dopp kit with Advil, Liquid IV, and a ziplock bag with candy,” he said. You just come across a little nugget of love from her.”
