The New York Times-20080127-Laura Brown and Brian Vogt
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Laura Brown and Brian Vogt
Full Text (945 words)IN Laura Anne Brown's experience, few men are brave enough to call a date a date. Guys would invite her to a movie, for coffee or to dinner, but rarely would they identify it by that word, loaded as it is with potential for joy or pain.
This presented a problem for Ms. Brown, a 36-year-old lawyer for Quality Trust for Individuals With Disabilities, a nonprofit advocacy group in Washington, who has some pretty strong ideas about spirituality, service to society and about marriage.
That is a very intimidating thing for most men, because in my experience they're wishy-washy, they skirt around things, said Ms. Brown, an Arlington, Va., native.
Then she met one who wasn't afraid. That man, Brian Christian Vogt, a senior program officer for Asia at the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, was a recent transplant to Washington from Princeton University, where he had received a master's in public and international affairs.
Mr. Vogt, who was raised primarily in Covington, Ky., where his parents ran a premarital counseling program for Catholic couples, had joined St. Aloysius, a historic Roman Catholic church in an area of Washington that only recently began its recovery from riots in 1968. He and Ms. Brown, a Sunday school teacher at St. Aloysius, both attended Mass in the church's basement, a plain room with industrial carpeting and a piano for the choir.
Mutual friends from the church introduced them, but each didn't really know much about the other until a three-day church-sponsored backpacking trip in 2005. And then, a few days after that hike, it happened. Mr. Vogt sent her a simple e-mail message, containing the word: date.
It was so refreshing, she recalled thinking, Here is a man I can work with.
Humble, but direct. It was an irresistible combination for Ms. Brown. She was also charmed by his penchant for political activism, which started at age 8, when Mr. Vogt began a door-to-door campaign asking neighbors to sign a petition to change his housing development's rules on pets so he could have a dog. She soon discovered Mr. Vogt's deeply analytical side.
He is very reluctant to make any decision at all until he has considered all the angles, said Shane Dickey, a boyhood pal. But when it comes to a marriage, how can you cover all the angles? He added, He needed to find a partner who would be certain to share his values.
About a year and a half into their relationship, Ms. Brown could sense Mr. Vogt was hesitant about the next step, so one quiet evening at his apartment, she took out a handwritten list of topics that she had developed. It consisted of eight discussion points, including family, spirituality and sexuality.
I thought, 'If I eliminate some of his uncertainty, maybe he'll be more willing to take this risk,' Ms. Brown said.
She considered asking him to marry her. Instead, over a period of several months, she brought out the list, engaging him in a discussion on one of the topics following an evening out or on a weekend afternoon.
After just a handful of discussions, Mr. Vogt, 34, recalled thinking, Of course, this is right. He added, It's really the most important decision of your life, this is much more permanent than any other decision.
He then asked her out on their most ambitious date yet: the Maryland Challenge, a 41-mile day hike on a segment of the Appalachian Trail. When she readily accepted, Mr. Vogt recalled thinking, 'If she is someone who is willing at the drop of the hat to do something crazy like that, that's one indicator. On a deeper level, she is a person who is adaptable and very comfortable in all sorts of situations and someone who seeks purpose in their life; those are the sort of things that I really admire about her.'
He scouted out one of the longest days of the year, and on June 9, 2007, the couple set out before dawn.
The whole time I'm nervous, of course, Mr. Vogt said of his proposal plan. I can't do it in the morning; what happens if one of us gets injured or if we just can't make it?
But at mile 29, with blistered feet, a dozen miles to go and nightfall not far off, Mr. Vogt started fumbling in his knapsack for the ring. Once he had it in hand, he said to Ms. Brown, This might not be the best time, but. ...
Bliss carried them through the final miles, and just before midnight, they stumbled up one last hill to a historic inn in Harpers Ferry, W.Va.
On Jan. 12, Ms. Brown and Mr. Vogt were married before 185 guests by the Rev. Si Hendry, a Roman Catholic priest, in St. Aloysius' austere basement sanctuary. No one except the bride's closest friends noticed the last traces of a cold she had caught while spending a week in the snowy farmland of Iowa canvassing with Mr. Vogt for the Democratic presidential contender Senator Barack Obama.
Taking to the campaign trail might seem an unnecessarily stressful diversion, coming as it did just two weeks before their wedding. But her willingness to push her limits is exactly what he loves about her, the bridegroom said.
At the couple's reception, at the Torpedo Factory Art Center in Alexandria, Va., the bridegroom's father, Jim Vogt, said the campaign swing seemed a fitting move.
It says they got their priorities straight, he said.
[Illustration]PHOTOS: WASHINGTON, JAN. 12: Best wishes from Jim and Susan Vogt, the bridegroom's parents, above, after the wedding. (PHOTOGRAPHS BY MICHAEL TEMCHINE FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES)