On Sept. 26, 2021, Colin Ernest Barkell noticed Kayla Dianne Pecchioni stroking her hairless kitten at a screening of the Tony Awards. He was immediately attracted. Especially to the cat.
In the lounge of the Chicago condominium building the place theater followers had gathered for the present, “I was like, ‘I need to see this guy’,” he mentioned of the creature. By the time “Moulin Rouge!” had racked up its ultimate award that night time, he was midway in love with the blanket-swaddled kitten in Ms. Pecchioni’s arms. Three nights later, he fell totally in love with Ms. Pecchioni.
Mr. Barkell and Ms. Pecchioni, who reside in Harlem, are performing artists. She is presently the swing position and an understudy for the character Sugar Kane in Broadway’s “Some Like It Hot.” Before he shaped the rock band King Vaudeville final yr, he was knowledgeable Irish dancer.
Their meet-up within the foyer of Marquee at Block 37 residences was not random: That September, each had been solid in “Paradise Square,” a musical that began its run in Chicago earlier than shifting to Broadway in April 2022. Each had made their technique to the foyer for the Tonys screening with their castmates 12 days into rehearsals.
For Ms. Pecchioni, 31, the viewing celebration had given rise to dueling instincts. “It was our first opportunity to hang out as a cast, which was great,” she mentioned. But the gathering in an unfamiliar metropolis with a roomful of newish faces was additionally anxiousness producing. Paw McCatney, the kitten she had adopted 4 months earlier as an emotional assist animal to assist her by way of the stress and uncertainty of the pandemic, helped with that. A hairless cat, she mentioned, is a dependable dialog starter.
“It’s 50-50 for people,” she mentioned. “They’re either, ‘I’m very intrigued!’ or ‘Get that thing away from me.’” That Mr. Barkell so immediately placed himself within the former class certified him as new buddy materials straight away.
Ms. Pecchioni is from Louisville, Ky. Until she was 4, she lived together with her maternal grandparents, Andrea and Frank Pecchioni, so her mom, Deedee Cummings, may end her bachelor’s diploma at Bennett College. “I had this fun hippie life with my grandparents,” she mentioned. “We’d garden and listen to the Beatles. It was very, very lovely.”
Soon after Ms. Cummings earned her diploma and returned to Louisville, she met Ms. Pecchioni’s stepfather, Anthony Cummings. She has two younger brothers, Anthony II and Nicholas.
Two years of acting on Norwegian Cruise Line cruises adopted, one thing she may have executed perpetually, she mentioned. “The only thing that broke me out of it was my mom kind of tapping me on the shoulder and saying, ‘You have bigger goals.’”
In 2016, she moved to Inwood, in Manhattan, and days later booked her first gig as a singer with the Radio City Christmas Spectacular. A yr later, she landed a number one position enjoying Nabulungi in “The Book of Mormon.”
In lean instances, earlier than she was solid in “Paradise Square,” she labored retail jobs at shops together with Lululemon. Her social life didn’t slip by way of the cracks. “I dated a lot” in New York she mentioned. “But I always dated with the intention of finding my person, and nothing ever really stuck.”
On Tonys night time in Chicago, she didn’t see Mr. Barkell as a possible boyfriend. She had observed him on day considered one of rehearsals, first due to his peak — Mr. Barkell is six-foot-six — after which due to his baritone voice, which everybody else paid consideration to, too. “It’s something the entire room took notice of, like ‘Who is this person?’” she mentioned. But “I was like, he’s just a guy, you know?’” Once he had established his appreciation for Paw McCatney, he grew to become only a man she trusted sufficient to escort her on a sightseeing tour round Chicago.
Mr. Barkell, 32, was born in Long Beach, Calif., and moved to Sterling, Va., together with his mother and father, Leland and Nancy Barkell, and older sister, Erin, firstly of highschool for his father’s profession as lieutenant colonel within the U.S. Marines. Though the household is “barely Irish,” he mentioned, he had taken a number of Irish dance classes earlier than he left California. As a youngster, he picked it up once more, enrolling in lessons on the Maple Academy of Irish Dance in close by Vienna.
“It was something I really loved to do, even though it’s not necessarily something that comes naturally to a tall person because there’s balance and coordination involved,” he mentioned.
At first he struggled to seek out his footing. But by 2012, when he moved to Galway, Ireland, for 2 years to additional his dance research, he had gained a number of regional championships. A yr later, he placed eighth within the World Irish Dancing Championships. His 2016 bachelor’s diploma in geography and geographical data sciences from George Mason University took him seven years to finish. “I kept leaving to do dance,” he mentioned.
Like Ms. Pecchioni, he carried out on cruise strains after faculty and later bounced between New York and Nashville working as a dancer and singer. Then, in 2021, “I got this crazy opportunity to be in a Broadway show, which wasn’t on my radar as something to pursue,” he mentioned. The alternative landed due to his background: “Paradise Square,” set within the Civil War period, is about an intersecting group of free Black folks and Irish immigrants in New York’s Five Points neighborhood.
On assembly Ms. Pecchioni in Chicago, his first thought wasn’t that they need to date. “It’s such a roller coaster,” he mentioned of his profession, that courting anybody with intention appeared practically unimaginable. But he modified his thoughts rapidly on Sept. 29, when he arrived at her short-term digs for his or her tour of the town.
Mr. Barkell will get choked up on the reminiscence of the music she was enjoying when he knocked. “No way,” he mentioned, when she opened the door. “You’re playing Nickelback?” Ms. Pecchioni braced herself for what she thought could be a polarizing dialog. “For whatever reason, it’s always been fun for people to hate Nickelback,” she mentioned. But “I frigging love Nickelback.” Same with Mr. Barkell: “I said, ‘These guys have had hit after hit. They’re bangers. They should be respected.’”
Ms. Pecchioni describes herself as “a big music person.” Hence Paw McCatney, a nod to her lifelong love of the Beatles, launched to her by her grandparents. Mr. Barkell can also be a Beatles fan. But each think about the Nickelback second a defining one.
“That was the spark,” she mentioned. “There was a quick switch where it went from getting to know each other to something else.” At Chicago’s Riverwalk, over beers on the Northman Beer & Cider Garden, they established that each had been single. Before they walked home, he kissed her. Then “it was, I’m going to spend every day with her. I knew it and I very nearly said that,” he mentioned.
Every week and a half later, he informed her he was in love together with her. “A day after that I said, ‘So, you want to be my girlfriend?’” Falling for Ms. Pecchioni had delivered him readability. “For me it was, ‘Oh, so this is what it’s supposed to feel like.’” Ms. Pecchioni felt the identical.
“Paradise Square” ran in Chicago till early December. For the vacations, the couple street tripped to Nashville, the place Mr. Barkell was performing with a band that predated King Vaudeville, after which to Louisville and Calumet, Mich., the place Mr. Barkell’s mother and father had retired. Both had given their households a heads-up concerning the seriousness of their romance. A way of instantaneous acceptance greeted them in each hometowns. “Everything naturally fell into place,” Ms. Pecchioni mentioned. “That’s the theme of our whole relationship.”
When the present made its Broadway debut final yr, Mr. Barkell moved into Ms. Pecchioni and Paw’s Harlem condominium. When it closed in July, he was already planning to suggest. His mother and father knew a jeweler in Michigan who helped him design a diamond and blue topaz toi et moi ring; on Oct. 3, after an evening spent performing Irish dance at a charity occasion at Chelsea Factory, he offered it of their lounge.
“He was crying and I was screaming,” Ms. Pecchioni mentioned. Her pleasure apart, it wasn’t the proposal she had imagined. In her fantasy model, she seemed down at her suitor as he dropped to 1 knee. In actual life, “he’s so tall we were still eye-to-eye.”
On Oct. 8, Ms. Pecchioni and Mr. Barkell had been married at Hazelnut Farm in Louisville. Derwin Webb, a Pecchioni household buddy and a choose of the Jefferson County Court, officiated a conventional ceremony for 140 visitors that included a number of former “Paradise Square” castmates.
When Mr. Webb pronounced them married, they seemed out on a sea of damp-eyed, cheering family members. With a double-fist bump and joyful tears of their very own, the couple recessed down the grassy aisle to what each thought of the position of a lifetime: as companions for all times.
On This Day
When Oct. 8, 2023
Where Hazelnut Farm, Louisville, Ky.
They’re the Tops At a cocktail hour steps from the altar, visitors had been proven Southern hospitality within the type of a grazing desk piled with recent fruit, cheeses and caviar. For dinner, they selected from beef tenderloin and hen piccata. Dessert was a strawberry cake topped with a Polaroid image of the couple of their wedding ceremony garments (a Martina Liana robe for her; a black tuxedo for him). “We always wanted to look like the cake topper couple at our wedding,” Ms. Pecchioni mentioned.
Step Lively After the couple danced with their mother and father, a dance ground was cleared for an Irish dance session led by Mr. Barkell. More than a dozen visitors joined in, with Ms. Pecchioni making a late entrance to bop her approach into the center of the group.
From Day 1 Kennedy Caughell, a “Paradise Square” castmate and wedding ceremony visitor, was there the night time the couple bonded on the 2021 Tony Awards. Back in Chicago, “I watched their love grow from this kind of nervous affection for each other to falling head over heels,” she mentioned. As a pair, “they heat up a room.”
