"You're Great With Her and She's Great for You"

Aaron Cohen & Miriam Schneider

When the band struck up "Hava Nagila" at Aaron Cohen and Miriam Schneider's wedding reception, the crowd that enveloped them was eight to 10 people thick. The dance floor proved too small; guests spilled out over 20 feet from the couple, forming mini hora rings at the fringes of the ballroom.

The bride and groom "are each at the epicenter of large circles of friends," explained best man Noah Oppenheim. And for more than 10 minutes in the second hour of their marriage, those circles merged in celebration of the couple's union.

There was cause to celebrate: Those circles did, after all, create this union.

In the spring of 2006, four people conceived of the couple's introduction over dinner: Oppenheim, a friend of Cohen's from their undergrad days at Harvard; his wife, Allison; their friend Marc Mezvinsky; and his girlfriend, Chelsea Clinton, former president Bill Clinton's daughter, who'd been close with Schneider since high school when they were both dancers at the Washington School of Ballet.

Cohen is a self-deprecating television sportswriter who marks his life by Olympic Games, where he writes for Bob Costas, and where he decided, between telecasts in Turin, Italy, that it was time to find a proper girlfriend. Schneider was a ballerina-turned-litigator who grew up speaking Spanish in the Washington house of her humanitarian parents.

The four friends set up a Friday night dinner for the six of them. That afternoon, Cohen's 91-year-old grandmother, who'd been ill for a long time, passed away. Her last words to him were an affirmation of what he already intended to do: "Go find a nice Jewish girl."

Cohen, a Long Island native who can be hesitant and reserved when taken out of his comfort zone, nervously changed his outfit "a bunch of times" before leaving his apartment. Schneider, meanwhile, is chatty and ebullient, the type of woman so comfortable with herself that she puts others at ease.

And that night, Cohen recalls, she gave "a virtuoso performance . . . just charming. One hundred percent charming the whole way through."

He walked her home and asked if they could go on a date by themselves.

Solo dates did occur, though most of the ensuing ones were brief. Schneider, whose father, Mark, was the director of the Peace Corps at the end of the Clinton administration, was going into law school finals and preparing to take the New York state bar exam. If Cohen was really interested, he would have to be patient, see her for an ice cream cone or a quick walk when she could afford a study break.

"Honestly, I still am kind of a workaholic," says Cohen, 31, who has won a slew of sports Emmys, including one for writing "24/7," a documentary-style boxing show on HBO. "So to me it was attractive that she was studying really hard."

And her turn to be patient would come soon enough. By their second year of dating, Schneider had fallen for Cohen's surprising wit and thoughtfulness and was ready to get married. So ready, recalled bridesmaid Grimsley Matkov during a toast at their Mellon Auditorium reception, that Schneider "all but staged her own engagement."