Falling for ‘the Same Kind of Weird’

Jessica Rose Papilla’s older sister, Noelle Papilla, thought her Starbucks co-worker, Michael Leopold Burnett, might be the perfect match for her sister.

Mr. Burnett began working at the coffee shop in Milwaukee, where Ms. Papilla’s sister was his shift supervisor and trainer, in May 2009. By that summer, she started thinking he and her sister were “the same kind of weird,” as she put it. She began telling each about the other.

Three months later, Ms. Papilla started working at the same Starbucks. But she was a closer and Mr. Burnett was an opener. The two never crossed paths.

“We exchanged notes — first about the goings on of the store and eventually little hellos and doodles,” Ms. Papilla said. But one day in February 2010, “I was closing, Michael came in, and that was it,” Ms. Papilla said. “Love at first sight.”

The next month, the two saw the band the Magnetic Fields at the Pabst Theater in Milwaukee. “At some point, Michael fell asleep,” Ms. Papilla said of their first time hanging out. “I studied through the opener. It was like we were so comfortable; we didn’t have to pretend.”

They continued to exchange notes and to have “hangouts here and there,” said Ms. Papilla, who was busy as an undergraduate at Marquette University in Milwaukee. It wasn’t until May 2011 that the two spent time together more regularly.

“It was a slow burn,” Mr. Burnett said.

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They consider their first official date to be July 3, 2011, when they went to a parking structure on the Marquette campus to watch Fourth of July fireworks. Unfortunately, the buildings downtown blocked their view.

So Mr. Burnett drove them to a nearby suburb. “We caught the tail end of the community fireworks show and spent the rest of the evening sitting along the creek talking, laughing and falling in love,” Ms. Papilla said.

That night, the two decided they were official.

In September, Ms. Papilla moved to Washington for a four-month semester at Marquette’s Les Aspin Center for Government, through which she had an internship with Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois. They talked on the phone and wrote letters. When her internship ended, the two moved into a tiny studio apartment on the Marquette campus.

After graduating with her master’s degree, Ms. Papilla landed a job in Nashville. They lived there from July 2014 to September 2015, when they moved into Mr. Burnett’s childhood home in Colgate, Wis.

In June 2016, they moved again to Syracuse, N.Y., where Ms. Papilla had been accepted into the Ph.D. program for economics at Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. However, in June 2017, she left the program after being recruited for a job as a data analyst in Chicago. The couple moved to Chicago and rented an apartment in Logan Square, where they continue to live.

One of the couple’s favorite activities while Ms. Papilla was still an undergrad in college was to go to Quimby’s Bookstore in Chicago, which “had an analog, dip-and-dunk photo booth,” Ms. Papilla said. “We always made sure we had cash on hand to take a photo strip together.”

The booth was later relocated to Cole’s Bar in Logan Square, where Mr. Burnett was a regular. The couple said they have more than 300 photo strips from that booth.

On Dec. 11, 2023, they went to see musician Andrew Bird’s Gezelligheid concert at Fourth Presbyterian Church in Chicago, as they do every year.

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Afterward, they went to Cole’s and into the photo booth, where Mr. Burnett proposed.

Ms. Papilla, 33, grew up in Sacramento and works remotely as a client success lead at the San Francisco-based fintech company Affirm. She also performs burlesque under the stage name Siomai Moore and is a lipstick kiss print reader. She holds a bachelor’s degree in political science and economics and a master’s degree in applied economics, both from Marquette.

Mr. Burnett, 34, is a self-employed artistic blacksmith and a Fire Arts Center of Chicago board member. He studied at the Maryland Institute College of Art and Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design.

The couple were married on Jan. 26 by World Famous *BOB*, a “draglesque star” who was ordained through Universal Life Church and who Ms. Papilla considers a “burlesque fairy drag mother.” Fifty-three guests attended the ceremony, which Ms. Papilla described as “silly and fun.”

The ceremony and cocktail hour were held at Cole’s, where the couple required every guest to get in the photo booth. “Before we exited Cole’s Bar and headed over to Boonie’s Filipino Restaurant for dinner. We conducted a ‘strip search,’” Ms. Papilla said. “That is, we had all guests hand over their photo strips so that we could make copies.”