When Samantha Rosensweig, who is well versed at lip reading, picked up on a chat John-Jay Pontrelli had with his cousin, she used the opening.
Samantha Lee Rosensweig’s job as a senior marketing manager at Bumble feeds her passion for relationship building. “I love people connecting with people on any sort of level,” she said.
So when it came to her attention that John-Jay Richard Pontrelli wasn’t quite sure about their level of connection after a month of dating, she spoke up right away.
“I don’t want to seem like I was eavesdropping,” Ms. Rosensweig said to Mr. Pontrelli in February 2018, as they were walking to her apartment in Manhattan’s TriBeCa neighborhood after running into one of his cousins at a Lower East Side bar. “But I saw your cousin ask you, ‘Is that your girlfriend,’ and you said, ‘I don’t know.’ What does that mean?”
Mr. Pontrelli, who goes by J.J., didn’t realize Ms. Rosensweig had been within earshot of the conversation. And in fact she wasn’t: hard of hearing in one ear since childhood, Ms. Rosensweig can read lips. “That’s Sam’s party trick,” he said.
It might also be an effective way to move the needle forward in a new relationship. By the time they reached her apartment that night, they were a couple.
Ms. Rosensweig and Mr. Pontrelli, both 29, met on Bumble in January 2018, before Ms. Rosensweig started working there. Each had recently graduated from college, Ms. Rosensweig with a bachelor’s degree in political science from Colgate University and Mr. Pontrelli with a bachelor’s degree in economics from Towson University.
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