Finding a Love Connection on Zoom

Cheri Spigner and Tracey Syphax were married at Philadelphia’s National Constitution Center after spending a history-making pandemic year getting to know each other on and off line.

On May 22, after the planning was finished, the attire selected, the menu carefully curated and the guests assembled, Cheri D. Spigner had a moment to stand on a balcony and get a covert, bird’s-eye view of her wedding ceremony. Guests were neatly arranged, seated on chairs that formed a pair of circles around an altar. Two of the chairs lay empty: A tribute to Ms. Spigner’s mother and father, who are both deceased. Ms. Spigner’s mother had died earlier that month. So when Ms. Spigner saw the empty chairs, she said, she “almost started crying.” For comfort, she locked her eyes on her soon-to-be husband, Tracey D. Syphax, who stood at the altar. “I remember thinking, ‘if I look at Tracey, I’ll be able to get through it,’” Ms. Spigner said. “I just knew I would get a sense of serenity from him, a sense of peace. I knew that the overwhelming anxiousness that I felt would calm down.” Ms. Spigner and Mr. Syphax had met about a year earlier, in April 2020. Ms. Spigner, 51, a sales director for Zimmer Biomet, a medical device company based in Warsaw, Ind., was then a fairly recent arrival in Philadelphia. She had moved there in 2016 from the San Francisco Bay Area, where she has spent most of her life. She grew up in Richmond, Calif., then earned a bachelor’s degree in business administration from Holy Names University in Oakland, Calif., and a master’s degree in leadership and organizational development from Saint Mary’s College in Moraga, Calif.