When Delanie Joy Linden first saw Zachary Florentino Murguía Burton, he was lost.
It was November 2021 in Cambridge, Mass. They had connected on Hinge, and he was picking her up at M.I.T., where she is a doctoral candidate in art history, for their first date — except he couldn’t find her dorm.
“He just had a joyous smile. And that was my first glimpse of him,” Ms. Linden said, impressed by the fact that he was lost but still smiling.
They went to a nearby bar, where Dr. Burton ordered a “foie gras-infused” cocktail, which struck Ms. Linden as a funny and charming choice. He had been late for the date, and explained that he was delayed because a family member had called him for help in a mental health crisis.
That gave way to a deeper conversation, and they found themselves opening up about their personal experiences with mental health. She worked as a mental health liaison for students as part of her role as a graduate resident adviser. He had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder in 2017 and done mental health advocacy work, including creating a play about mental health called “The Manic Monologues.”
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“I didn’t plan on opening up about those kinds of things the very first date,” Dr. Burton said. He laughed and added: “Maybe the third or fourth.”
They also bonded over “being nerdy people in academia,” said Dr. Burton, who is an assistant professor of earth sciences at Montana State University and goes by Zack.
Dr. Burton, 31, holds a bachelor’s degree in earth and oceanographic science and German from Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, and a doctoral degree in geological and environmental sciences from Stanford. He was born in San Francisco and grew up mostly in Gran Canaria, Spain, and Heidelberg, Germany.
Ms. Linden, 32, has bachelor’s degrees in art history and neuroscience from the University of Michigan and a master’s in art history from Southern Methodist University. She grew up in Newport Beach, Calif.
After their first date, they went out the very next night, for dancing and karaoke with Ms. Linden’s best friend. That evening, “Zack just started busting out all these rock puns,” she said. He made her laugh, and impressed her friend.
At the time, however, she was preparing to move to Paris for six months of research. She wasn’t looking for a serious relationship — and yet, “I really felt like it was the cliché of when you least expect it, it happens,” she said.
So, after about six weeks of dating, they decided that Dr. Burton would quit his job in environmental consulting and move to Paris with her.
“Our parents and our friends, and basically everyone else was like, ‘Are you guys OK?’” Dr. Burton said. But they had been spending a lot of time together, and they wanted to try it. “It just really felt right,” he added.
About two months into their relationship, they said “I love you” on a dance floor after a brief pandemic-era ban on dancing in bars and restaurants was lifted in France.
Over the next year, they traveled and lived together, spending time in Massachusetts, Vermont, California, Sweden, Portugal and Germany, before returning to Paris. In May 2023, when they were living in Paris again — she on a yearlong Fulbright fellowship, and he working remotely on a postdoctoral fellowship — he proposed.
He went to great lengths to find a ring from the time period she studies — the French Revolution and Napoleonic Era — but struggled. He doesn’t speak French, and was told that the kind of engagement ring he sought didn’t really exist back then. But then, while shopping in a little “velvet-clad” shop in Paris, as he described it, he finally found it: a diamond-clad, gold French ring from the late 18th century.
On May 10, 2023, they went to the Louvre, and he asked her to take him to her favorite painting, Francois Boucher’s “Les Forges de Vulcain.” It was crowded, and they sat on a bench together. After a while, there was a “magical moment,” he said, when the gallery emptied out.
“I was talking about Isaac Newton’s theory of color optics,” she said, and out of the corner of her eye, she saw him get down on one knee.
For the week of their wedding, they organized a “festivities-filled” road trip, as they called it, for 110 guests in Andalusia, Spain. They wanted to use the occasion to spend quality time with their loved ones, exploring the beauty and history of the region.
On Nov. 8, the two were married at the Hall of Mosaics in the Alcázar of the Christian Monarchs, a medieval fortress that is part of the area declared a UNESCO World Heritage site. Miguel Ángel Torrico Pozuelo, a city official of Córdoba, officiated.
After the ceremony, the couple held a reception at the Real Círculo de la Amistad de Córdoba, a private club, featuring cocktails, jamón, dinner in a salon adorned with oil paintings, and live flamenco music. Along with their guests, they danced until morning.
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