A Wedding Suit and Maybe a Marriage ‘Blessed by Zendaya’

Their first official date was on Jan. 4, 2025. They went to Rialto Grande for a drink, Gueros Brooklyn for tacos, and then Fust’s apartment, all in Crown Heights. “We talked a great deal about friendship,” Stephenson said. “I think we both quickly recognized that we’d built unusually close, diverse communities around us and treated friendship as a serious commitment rather than a secondary part of life.”

Fust added that “it felt like a really good first date.” So much so that he recalled thinking, “There goes my plan to just be single for a while.”

Eleven days later, they went to Locanda Vini & Olii for dinner and then to Stephenson’s apartment in Bedford-Stuyvesant to watch a movie. A third date soon followed at Fust’s apartment. “I brought flowers,” Stephenson said. “He cooked me short ribs.” Four months later, they became official.

In May, Fust and Stephenson moved in together in Crown Heights.

Instead of a formal proposal, a conversation on the subway from Manhattan to Brooklyn that August marked the beginning of their engagement. “Neither of us can remember the exact wording or even which person said it first,” Stephenson said.

The couple married on July 23 at the “wedding garden” across the street from the Manhattan Marriage Bureau. Chi Ossé, a friend of Stephenson’s and a member of the New York City Council representing District 36, who received a one-day marriage officiant license, officiated.

Ahead of their legal wedding, the couple hosted a celebratory event for 45 guests on July 11 at St. Joseph’s University in Clinton Hill, with a ceremony also led by Councilman Ossé, followed by a reception at Dinner Party, a restaurant also in Clinton Hill. An after-party at Rialto Grande, where they had their first date, was attended by 70 guests.

When the couple went thrifting for vintage wedding suits at Ebreo Vintage in Williamsburg, for their celebratory wedding, Zendaya and her stylist Law Roach walked in. “When I put on the fourth suit I was trying, Zendaya looked me up and down and said, ‘That’s the one.’ I bought it, of course,” Stephenson said. (It was by Nicky Hilton for Saks Fifth Avenue. Fust wore Repubblica di Genova from the same shop.) “We now joke that our marriage has been blessed by Zendaya.”