Love Italian American Style: That’s Amore

Christopher Joseph Marazzo did the unthinkable one Friday evening in October 2019. He left his bowl of pasta unfinished, and walked over to Rose Angelina Teresa Minutaglio’s booth in the back room at Forlini’s Italian restaurant in Lower Manhattan.

“She has this old world beauty, like a black-and-white photo,” said Mr. Marazzo, who turns 33 on Saturday. “She looks just like Sophia Loren.”

He often wrangled five to 15 friends to join him in his regular booth two Fridays a month while the singer Angelo Ruggiero belted out ’50s and ’60s tunes and Italian songs. The restaurant closed in 2022. (The painting of a mandolin and books, once above Mr. Marazzo’s booth, now hangs in the couple’s entryway.)

Oddly enough, that evening, Mr. Marazzo, who goes by Chris, mainly spoke to Ms. Minutaglio’s father, who was visiting from Austin, Texas, where she grew up.

“By the way, this is my daughter, Rose,” he recalled her father saying.

Mr. Marazzo, who had only learned her first name that evening, flung open the front doors after noticing they had left.

“Goodnight Rose!” he shouted, as she and her father waited for a cab.

“I was love struck,” said Mr. Marazzo, who is pursuing a master’s degree in computer science at Columbia and works as the senior investment strategist focusing on the housing market at Invictus Capital Partners. He graduated cum laude with a bachelor’s degree in economics and finance from the College of William & Mary.

Three months later, after regularly scanning the booths, he finally spotted Ms. Minutaglio. He pulled up a chair and got her number.

“We talked of all things Italian,” said Ms. Minutaglio, 30, who graduated with a bachelor’s degree in political science and communications from Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas. She is now the senior editor of features and special projects at ELLE Magazine.

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They soon learned their paternal grandmothers were from Naples, Italy, and he mentioned he helped carry the statue of San Gennaro during the annual Little Italy feast in New York.

They danced to Lou Monte’s version of “Che la Luna Mezzo Mare” (translated to “there is the moon in the middle of the sea”) and joined the usual kick line and sang, “New York, New York,” at the top of their lungs.

“Our souls have known each other for 1,000 years,” he said.

The next Friday they had dinner at One if by Land, Two if By Sea in Greenwich Village — one of the most romantic places in the city that came up in his Google search — and closed the place down.

Later, in the bitter cold they ducked into the closest bar — the Jekyll & Hyde Club — and laughed over drinks the color of antifreeze. They then had their first kiss on her stoop nearby on Morton Street, before he headed home to Battery Park City.

“I was over the moon,” she said, and asked him out the following Friday to her favorite bar, Cedar Local in the Financial District, where a drink — a Splash of Rose — had been named after her.

The third Friday, they returned to Forlini’s back room with at least 10 friends.

Once the pandemic hit, the relationship revved up. “I was happy to be in her orbit,” he said, as they hunkered down in her West Village apartment, and enjoyed pasta with his grandmother’s Sunday gravy recipe.

In April, they drove 30 hours straight to Texas, and quarantined at her parents’ weekend cabin in Llano, Texas, hill country, before staying with them for two months in Austin.

“I showed him my Texas,” she said, when they visited San Antonio on Easter Sunday, and walked along the river walk and around the Alamo.

They then spent the summer at his parents’ home in Gladstone, N.J., where his father has an industrial pizza oven in the basement. Mr. Marazzo grew up in nearby Basking Ridge.

In August 2022, they bought an apartment just off Central Park West.

He proposed in front of the house where her grandmother had lived in Malverne, N.Y., on March 26, 2023. (The two had been at a wedding nearby the night before.)

“I hear the Mister Softee truck,” said Mr. Marazzo, who saw it as a “sign to calm down.” His grandfather had begun the Delicious Ice Cream brand, with his own ice cream truck, in Staten Island. The family business was sold in 2022.

“I ordered a vanilla ice cream cone with rainbow sprinkles to share with Rose,” he said. A few minutes later he calmly got down on one knee.

On Feb. 24, 2024, in Manhattan, the Rev. Michael Hilbert, a Roman Catholic priest, officiated at St. Ignatius Loyola, with the Rev. James Bates, another Roman Catholic priest and an uncle of the groom, participating, before 130 guests. The couple were later toasted with fig grappa at the Columbus Citizens Foundation, an Italian heritage club.

At the ceremony, Ms. Minutaglio wore her mother’s 1984 satin wedding gown, which her mother originally made, and altered, including de-puffing the sleeves. In the Neapolitan tradition, the bride also wore coral — a red coral hair comb and earrings. She then changed into a tiered tulle gown with a hooded cape for the reception, which featured six cannoli towers for dessert.

Mr. Marazzo said their union is like a love story out of a classic Italian film, “but instead of Sophia Loren, I have Rose Minutaglio.”