Piku and Karthik

A tale as old as time, Karthik and Piku met in the same high-school spanish class when he was a sophomore, and she a freshman. While Piku was the better student focused on getting good grades, Karthik’s attention centered on securing dates for high school dances. The following year, lady luck placed him in the same class as Piku—the very room where he would ask her, in Spanish, to go to Prom with him.

Two proms later, they parted ways when Karthik went across the country to college, but stayed connected through email over the years. When Piku was considering where to move after college, coincidentally, Karthik was already in New York, the city she always wanted to live in. Karthik will tell you he’s 100% the reason she moved; she’ll admit that he had something to do with it.

Over the years, Karthik and Piku have had their share of growing apart, only to grow closer together every time they reconnected. In 2022, Karthik got word that they would be seeing each other again at a friend’s upcoming engagement party (and a confirmation on Hinge that she was single!). To break the ice, he asked her out to coffee, which turned into dinner and many more dates. The following summer, they moved in together into their Greenpoint apartment.

On a crisp New York City fall day in 2024, Karthik popped the question he’d been waiting to ask since their first day of Spanish class. She said yes!