Hali Feldman and Benjamin Friehling
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Hali Tara Feldman and Benjamin Lawrence Friehling were married Saturday evening. Rabbi Marvin Antosofsky officiated at the W Hotel in Manhattan.
The bride, 31, is the senior photo editor in New York for Details magazine, a Condé Nast publication. She graduated from Ithaca College and received a master's degree in fine arts photography from the School of Visual Arts.
She is the daughter of Randi G. Feldman and Lowell S. Feldman of Bethel, N.Y. Her parents own the Terrace Healthcare Center, a nursing and rehabilitation center in the Bronx, and Rolling Stone Ranch, an equestrian center in Bethel.
The bridegroom, 27, is an owner of Benji & Jake's, a restaurant in White Lake, N.Y. He graduated from Sterling College.
He is a son of Dr. Linda A. Friehling and Dr. Ted C. Friehling of Great Falls, Va. His mother is a pediatrician at Children's Medical Associates of Northern Virginia in Alexandria. His father, a cardiac electrophysiologist, is a founding partner of Arrhythmia Associates in Fairfax, Va., and the director of cardiac electrophysiology at Inova Fairfax Hospital there.
Mr. Friehling was selling pizza at a farmers' market not far from his restaurant when he met Ms. Feldman's father in 2006. The following summer, Mr. Feldman took his family, including his daughter, to Mr. Friehling's new restaurant in White Lake, near their home in the Catskills.
"She was fun to talk to," Mr. Friehling said of his first meeting with Ms. Feldman. "I was immediately in love with her. Without a doubt."
"I didn't sense that she was interested in me though," he continued. "She had her own life going on in the city. Upstate was just a vacation spot for her, and I was a small-restaurant owner. I didn't think I was quite up to her caliber."
On the weekends she visited her family, and they would go to his restaurant.
"He was adorable but too young, and we lived in separate places, so I never considered it," Ms. Feldman said of Mr. Friehling, who she noted was very persistent when he would go to their table.
It would take a couple of years and an accident before they settled into being a couple.
Mr. Friehling closed his restaurant every February to vacation in Tulum, Mexico, with friends. In 2009, a few weeks before the restaurant closed for the trip, Ms. Feldman, who was on one of her visits, happened to mention that she also loved Mexico and that she was planning to be in the same area on vacation.
First Published February 28, 2010 2:01 am
