Before a ‘Classy Dinosaur’ Wedding Came Leukemia and I.V.F.

Kaitlin Flannery and John Mancini met in Palo Alto, Calif., and moved across the country together, until a shocking diagnosis meant they had to live apart for a while.

Dr. Kaitlin Flannery and John Mancini were 29 and 28 when they met on Bumble in April 2018. They were both living in Palo Alto, Calif. — she was a resident in anesthesiology at Stanford University, and he was a lead data scientist at a cybersecurity start-up in San Jose. At the time, they couldn’t have foreseen the cancer diagnosis that would come less than two years into their relationship. On Bumble, “We talked briefly on the app about the podcasts we had been listening to and then quickly set a date,” Dr. Flannery said. “John claims this is the one and only date where I was on time.” At the end of the date, they looked at their schedules to plan a second date. “This is when I quickly disclosed that I was going to be gone most of the next week interviewing for a job in Boston,” said Dr. Flannery, who is originally from Sioux City, Iowa, and earned a bachelor's degree in integrative physiology at the University of Iowa and a medical degree at the Carver College of Medicine at the University of Iowa, before her Stanford residency.