For years, Jennie Michelle Thomas and Jeff Robert Angell have performed a song that Ms. Thomas wrote called “Wishes.” But it wasn’t until the day of their wedding, June 29, that Ms. Thomas revealed the deeper meaning behind the lyrics.
“I made some wishes in December / that haven’t melted with the spring,” the song goes.
In a card for Mr. Angell, Ms. Thomas wrote that the line referred to New Year’s Eve in 2019, when Mr. Angell brought Ms. Thomas to his family’s beach house in Delaware. “We sent lanterns into the sky and made wishes on them,” she wrote. “I wished to marry him.”
The two met on April 2, 2019, at a talent competition for inmates at the Rikers Island jail complex in New York City. Mr. Angell, who has worked at Rikers since 2018, was assisting with audio and performing with a band, and Ms. Thomas was there as a volunteer.
Ms. Thomas, 34, a singer and songwriter, is from Yorba Linda, Calif., and has a bachelor’s degree in theater arts from Azusa Pacific University in Azusa, Calif. She was previously a coordinator for the Friendly Visiting program at the Lenox Hill Neighborhood House in New York, helping to organize volunteer visits with older adults who are unable to leave their homes.
Mr. Angell, 48, is a music therapist and a supervisor of creative arts therapy for Correctional Health Services at Rikers Island. He grew up in Rockville, Md., and has a bachelor’s degree in music from the University of Pittsburgh and a master’s degree in music therapy from N.Y.U.
While they spoke only briefly at the Rikers talent competition, Mr. Angell was immediately intrigued. “I was like, whoa, who is this breath of fresh air?” he said. “She has a very effervescent, bubbly personality. I was watching her for the rest of the event.”
During cleanup, he asked for Ms. Thomas’s number, and the two went on a date in Washington Square Park a week and a half later. From that day, things moved quickly. “We fell pretty hard,” Mr. Angell said.
But near the end of that May, Mr. Angell revealed to Ms. Thomas that his divorce, which he had previously told her about, would not be finalized until September. Ms. Thomas was distraught, believing that she had made a mistake by jumping too fast into the relationship, and ended things between them.
“I thought about him all summer,” she said. “I really wanted to be with him, and I’d go back and forth about talking to him.”
In early September, she saw on Facebook that he was playing in a show, so she asked if she could come watch. She planned to be casual and brought a friend for support. “But the entire gig, I was watching him,” she said. “I was obsessed again.” She invited him to her birthday party, and by the end of the month, once his divorce was final, they were back together.
A few months later, Ms. Thomas realized she was in love. But Mr. Angell was treading more carefully.
“Right before we split up, I was very much falling in love with her,” Mr. Angell said. But when they resumed their romance, he said, “I closed myself off, not even consciously, but I was a bit guarded.”
The two connected over their spirituality — they were both members of New Life Fellowship Church — and over music. In 2021, they began performing together, including at Rockwood Music Hall on the Lower East Side in Manhattan, and in 2022, Mr. Angell produced Ms. Thomas’s first extended play, “Jennie Thomas.”
Still, the pain of Mr. Angell’s divorce had left him apprehensive about marriage. He went to therapy and spoke with mentors about the possibility of remarrying.
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On Dec. 23, 2023, while visiting Ms. Thomas’s family in Yorba Linda for Christmas, Mr. Angell took her for a sunset gondola ride in Newport Harbor. The boat was strewn with rose petals, and there was a box of chocolate truffles and a bottle of Martinelli’s sparkling cider.
After waiting for years, Ms. Thomas had stopped believing that Mr. Angell would propose, so when he did, she was in shock. “I was shaking,” she said. “I couldn’t stop saying, ‘Oh my gosh.’”
They married on June 29 before 126 guests at the Highlands Mansion and Gardens in Fort Washington, Pa. Colt Emswiler, the associate pastor at Life Center Church NYC, led a self-uniting ceremony. Todd Drake, a director for operations at Penington Friends House, a Quaker organization, was the second witness.
Music was a core part of the celebration, with friends performing at the ceremony and the reception, including the salsa band Guaracha and a saxophone player named Henry Young. Mr. Young led a procession during the transition from cocktails to the reception, strutting through a garden to “When the Saints Go Marching In.”
Mr. Angell and Ms. Thomas sang their vows. Ms. Thomas wrote the melody and the chorus, but she and Mr. Angell wrote their individual verses separately.
“I’d rather be singing than talking,” Ms. Thomas said. “Music is a huge part of our story.”
#Sang #Hearts
