Aug. 30, 2023
Luis Damian Veron and Kenneth Michael Walsh were married Aug. 27 at the Little Church of the West in Las Vegas. Alejandra Paloma Rodriguez, Mr. Veron's sister and an ordained Universal Life Church minister, officiated.
The couple had originally planned to wed at the New York City Marriage Bureau in early 2020 followed by a rooftop reception at The Kimberly Hotel, before the Centers for Disease Control recommended that social events be postponed.
Mr. Veron (right), 45, is a senior project manager at Trustforte Corporation, an academic equivalency and translation service in Manhattan. He received a bachelor of arts in political science from Rutgers University and a master's in international relations from New York University. He is also a freelance writer, whose articles and reviews have appeared in The Daily Beast and Towleroad.com.
He is the son of Benedicto Damian Veron, of Gainesville, Fla., and Angela Elsa Veron, of Landing, N.J. His parents emigrated from Argentina in 1970, shortly after the birth of their first daughter.
Mr. Veron’s maternal grandmother, the late Josefina, as a young widow spent days on end outside Casa Rosada, the presidential palace in Buenos Aires, attempting to garner the attention of Eva Peron, wife of President Juan Peron, in the hope of procuring a home for herself and her three small children through the first lady's Eva Peron Foundation. The effort proved fruitful. In fact, shortly after moving into the new residence, Mr. Veron's grandmother decided she preferred a better-situated house on a corner lot and successfully lobbied to relocate. (The home remains in the family to this day.)
Mr. Walsh, 56, is a publishing editor at The Wall Street Journal in Manhattan. He was previously a staff editor for The New York Times News Service. He graduated with a bachelor's degree from the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Communication at Arizona State University. He has written the award-winning LGBT blog Kenneth in the (212) since 2005, and his memoir, "Wasn't Tomorrow Wonderful?," was published in 2014 by Riverdale Avenue Books.
He is a son of the late William Walsh, of Schuylkill Haven, Pa., and Molly Chilinski, of Eloy, Ariz., and a stepson of Gary Chilinski, of Eloy, Ariz.
Mr. Walsh's paternal grandfather, the late Michael "Mickey" Walsh, was a noted boxer and fight promoter in Schuylkill County, Pa., and a sports writer at the Pottsville Republican. Mr. Walsh's paternal great-great-grandfather, Martin Bergan, was hanged in 1879 for his role in the Molly Maguires, a secret society of pro-union Irish immigrant coal miners in Pennsylvania. A 1970 film directed by Martin Ritt and starring Sean Connery and Richard Harris, "The Molly Maguires," recounted the ordeal.
The couple met through the social-media platform then known as Twitter, after Mr. Veron, an ardent Rafael Nadal fan, began responding to Mr. Walsh's tweets about tennis. (Mr. Walsh roots for Novak Djokovic.) During their first date, at a Cuban diner in Chelsea, the couple came to realize that they had had a brief online flirtation in the early aughts, but Mr. Walsh resisted pursuing it at the time because he "didn't want to deal" with someone who lived across the Hudson in New Jersey. This time he was more than willing.
In 2019, after a five-year courtship, Mr. Veron proposed on the balcony of a hotel in the Recoleta neighborhood of Buenos Aires. (Mr. Walsh was stunned -- marriage wasn’t something gay people his age were allowed to ever dream about growing up -- before quickly saying yes.) Then in 2023, with the pandemic and several family crises abated, Mr. Walsh (re)proposed to Mr. Veron at the couple’s Upper West Side apartment -- with a plan hatched to bring the wedding closer to Mr. Walsh’s mother, who is no longer able to travel as far as the East Coast.
To honor their families' heritage, the ceremony featured a bilingual reading of the South American poet Pablo Neruda's "Love Sonnet XVII," first in Spanish by Mr. Veron's sister and then in English by Mr. Walsh's niece, Ally Rose Jaurigue. Later, an Irish ring-warming ceremony was performed, with Mr. Walsh's brother and best man, Terence Ryan Walsh, overseeing the ritual.
The reception was held in the private lounge at Rí Rá Irish Pub, with literary-themed centerpieces designed by Mr. Walsh's sister, Jennifer Dianne Jaurigue, and a cake topper that included a nod to the couple's gray tuxedo cat, Harvey. (The grooms wore matching gray tuxes in honor of their fashionable feline.) The couple's first dance was to a modern interpretation of "Wouldn't It Be Loverly" -- from the Lerner and Loewe musical "My Fair Lady" -- that Rosanne Cash, then a neighbor of the couple's, performed and dedicated to the men on the occasion of what was supposed to be their wedding date, May 9, 2020, before Covid put those plans on hold.
Upon hearing that the nuptials had at last taken place more than three years later, with her song as the musical highlight of the reception, Ms. Cash wrote: "Oh my. I'm honored to be a part of this. Congratulations!"
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