Dr. Anais Ovalle and Emily Black learned a lot about each other when they got lost in the woods on their second date. Three years later, they had a snowy wedding day in Vermont. …
On their second date, Dr. Anais Ovalle and Emily Black got lost hiking at the Moose Hill Wildlife Sanctuary in Sharon, Mass. Snow fell and then it got dark. Even though they lost cellphone service for a while and eventually had to call an Uber to get to their cars, both kept their cool.
Dr. Ovalle would later refer to that date, which took place March 4, 2018, in her wedding vows. “We absorbed the peace of being in each other’s presence,” she said. “We witnessed the beauty of the world around us. This was when I knew a life with you would be different.”
Ms. Black, 33, is a product manager in the Boston office of Autodesk, a software company based in San Rafael, Calif. Although she completed law school, she decided she did not want to practice law, nor marry the man she was engaged to, nor “check off all the boxes,” as Southern women like her are supposed to do, she said. And in 2017, she had a health scare that made her not take things for granted.
Dr. Ovalle, 31, grew up in New Jersey and the Dominican Republic. She attended medical school in Santo Domingo and returned to the United States for residency. “I could be myself here and fall in love,” she said.
She is an infectious disease fellow and preventive medicine resident at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, N.H., where the couple now live.
During her residency, Dr. Ovalle was living in Providence, R.I. Her first marriage had ended, and when not at the hospital, she frequented a coffee shop, where she said she asked out any woman “who looked like she might be queer.”
