Our Story

James and Grace’s Slow-Cooked Story

By H. CHRISTINE AN

Two years after James and Grace met on Cornell University campus, their relationship was kindled through conversation about James cooking chili for his friends and Grace reciprocating by emailing him the The New York Times article, “Tender Beans, Without Soaking” (October 29, 2010). That email thread with the subject, “tender beans”, spanned two months with regular exchange of their thoughts on various topics, ranging from hearty (faith) to tender (family).

Flashback to October 2008. A recent Princeton graduate, James An, was invited to Cornell by his high school friend for a visit. The thoughtful, intentional friend prepped junior coed, Grace Chung – “You and James would look really good together…and his mom is very sweet.” Though James’s drive to Ithaca glowed during peak autumn foliage season, his friendship with Grace was slow to bloom. The brief introduction at an a cappella concert was followed a month later by coffee with friends. Their next get-together was marked by assumptions and fluster – James meant it as a date; Grace mistakenly assumed their mutual friend would come along; they arrived late at the movie theater and even sat at a wrong showing, which resulted in just 45 minutes of Slumdog Millionaire.

This left time for a long chat at Tea Spot in Greenwich Village, where they engaged in a conversation that Grace described as “deeply personal”. The evening ended with James pleasantly surprising Grace by getting off the subway one stop early so he could walk Grace to her train station.  Grace also left a good impression on James as a “very special person” that he connected well with and admired. James worked up the courage to call and ask her to dinner. Grace initially agreed, but moments later wrote that she would prefer to hang out in a group. James received this message as an indication that she wasn’t very interested; Grace recalled that she wasn’t ready for a relationship and didn’t want to mislead him.

Thus began their hiatus, except for a visit with a group of friends to The Metropolitan Museum of Art, where they both didn’t perceive connection with each other. During the year and a half period without communication, James felt the opportunity had passed while Grace lamented to a friend that perhaps she was missing out on James. Grace realized that James possessed characteristics that she considered as “non-negotiables” in her significant other – theological sameness, work ethics, and humble leadership. She hoped for a potential open door to reconnect with James. After he relocated to Chicago, James responded to her Gmail status about her wisdom teeth extraction. The pace then picked up with a phone conversation, “tender beans” emails, and James asking Grace (then residing in Queens) to dinner during his Thanksgiving trip home to New York.

This time, Grace readily accepted the invitation as a natural next step with someone she has been conversing meaningfully. A few weeks later when a snow blizzard hit New York, they had their DTR (define the relationship) talk over Skype, which Grace now observes as a prelude to their New York-Chicago long-distance relationship.

Though they faced the disadvantage of hundreds of miles between them, their budding relationship was blessed with enthusiastic approval from both sets of their Korean parents. On their indelible first day of dating, James drove during the aftermath of the snowstorm and parked his car five blocks from Grace’s house because of road blocks due to the heavy snowfall. So Grace’s father trekked in the snow carrying the box of pears that Grace bought as a gift for James’s parents. Grace and James drove with the pears to Westchester, where Grace was warmly welcomed by his parents to a home meal.

Grace and James nurtured their friendship despite the distance factor.  They looked forward to getting together, and James took the leadership of not wavering from his confidence that their relationship would work. Simultaneously, Grace’s preconceived concerns about marriage, such as “shackling and prohibitive to personal development”, dissipated as James encouraged Grace to pursue good endeavors to serve others and grow her.

One of James’s reasons for applying to business schools was for the opportunity to live closer to Grace. His matriculation at Wharton from August 2012 allowed weekly dates. Reading together Meaning of Marriage by Tim Keller fostered the couple to think about marriage and be on the same page in their understanding of the purpose and realities of marriage.

The following January, James received an offer for a summer internship at the MasterCard office in Purchase, New York, which meant that he could finally live in New York again. On May 17, 2013, James proposed to Grace at their first date restaurant Osteria al Doge in Times Square, and the two celebrated with family and close friends overlooking the Manhattan skyline from his aunt’s Fifth Avenue rooftop. They plan to begin their married life from a home situated conveniently to both MasterCard and Grace’s midtown BlackRock office. One of their home cooked dishes will surely be chili with tender beans.