Josh Radnor and Jordana Jacobs got married outdoors this month amid a snowstorm, their 164 snow-covered guests shivering in the 20-degree evening air while Dr. Jacobs read a 10-minute monologue about her lover and Mr. Radnor responded with a 10-minute soliloquy.
The couple is no stranger to extraordinary circumstances and fell in love when they stumbled upon mushrooms.
It was February 2022, and Dr. Jacobs, a clinical psychologist, and Mr. Radnor, an actor and musician, were on a sound meditation retreat in upstate New York along with about 30 other people. There they ingested a psychedelic concoction before lying on the floor on opposite sides of a large room. Masks covered their eyes as they listened to singing bowls and chimes.
At this point, Mr. Radnor and Dr. Jacobs into each other's DMs.
“This is her,” Mr. Radnor, now 49, said, a voice telling him. “This is your wife.”
Across the room and the psilocybin-infused metaverse, Dr. Jacobs, 36, a conversation with her heart.
“What do you have to say to me?” she asked.
“Do you know that man over there, Josh?” it replied. “You’re attracted to him.”
They had met the day before at the start of the three-day retreat, which focused on the meditation “ceremony.”
Mr. Radnor, the star of the sitcom “How I Met Your Mother” who recently appeared in “Fleishman Is in Trouble” on Hulu, had been dealing with a painful breakup for several months. He traveled from his home in Los Angeles to his parents' home in Columbus, Ohio, to an Airbnb in Nashville, where he recorded an album with friends. Then he came to New York for a weekend of intense self-assessment.
Dr. Jacobs lives in Brooklyn, a subway ride from her close-knit family. She is a clinical psychologist with a private practice there. She graduated from Tufts University and received a doctorate in clinical psychology from Long Island University, Brooklyn.
She also headed inland this weekend because “these experiences really helped me understand who I am,” she said. She, too, was recovering from a broken relationship and had decided that this weekend would mark a new, less intellectual orientation where she would let her heart guide her.
The evening before the meditation, she and Mr. Radnor talked for half an hour. “We just experienced a really easy and fun way to get to know each other,” he said.
They talked about love and death and the connection between them, which Dr. Jacobs had told him that she had studied. But she told him she feared her approach was too “academic and intellectual.”
“I need more experience with both,” she said. Mr. Radnor was fascinated. “I thought it was evidence of real depth,” he said. “I thought she was impressive.”
They discussed his songwriting, which also incorporated themes of love and death, including in the album he recorded in Nashville that he eventually called “Eulogy.” Also Dr. Jacobs felt a spark.
Every couple has their own version of flirting. That was hers.
After her psychedelic experience, she felt within the framework of Dr. Jacobs' new commitment to being guided by her feelings required her to tell Mr. Radnor that she liked him.
She patted him on the shoulder. “I had this solemn experience of listening to my heart,” she said sheepishly, “and my heart is drawn to you.”
Slightly panicked at the emotions stirring within him, Mr. Radnor replied, “You have also come to me solemnly, but I am not ready to talk about it.”
Find more Vows columns here And Read our entire wedding, relationship and divorce report here.
Within minutes of leaving the retreat, he was ready. “Hello, this is Josh Radnor,” he texted her.
This began a month-long, modern letter advertising campaign. They talked about their families – both parents had long, successful marriages. She has brothers (three), he has sisters (two).
They discussed her career and his creative efforts to escape the shadow of a long-running hit sitcom. Dr. Jacobs, a television fanatic, said she had never seen “How I Met Your Mother,” which thrilled Mr. Radnor. “Fame robs you of the ability to make a first impression,” he said.
They talked, texted, and sent voice notes. “We were constantly in touch and sharing things we had written and done,” he said. “Thoughts, feelings, insights.”
Weeks later, Mr. Radnor was cast in “Fleishman Is in Trouble,” which was filmed in New York. He sublet a friend's apartment in Brooklyn and invited Dr. Jacobs to meet him for dinner.
“We had a really beautiful, intense and powerful first date where we went into a lot of depth,” she said.
Later that night, Mr. Radnor developed what he called a “vulnerability hangover” and told her “my walls were up,” he said.
Instead of feeling rejected, Dr. Jacobs was moved by his honesty. “To me, it showed that he was able to process the moment with me and tell me what was going on with him,” she said. “I just loved that.”
They became inseparable. He officially moved from Los Angeles to Brooklyn. She fell in love with his labradoodle, Nelson the dog. Within months they were discussing marriage.
“Actor and psychiatrist,” said Gillian Sturtevant, Dr. Jacobs' close friend from high school, and explained the couple's compatible tendency to talk (and talk) about their feelings.
They got engaged one morning in May in Joshua Tree, California. First they meditated. Then Mr. Radnor casually suggested that they write love letters to each other. His ended with a suggestion.
Your friends see them as the perfect match. “You're in a constant 'dorm-go-down' mode that most adults abandon after graduation,” said Elliott Holt, a fiction writer who attended Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, with Mr. Radnor .
The couple decided to have a January wedding in New York, just before Mr. Radnor would begin rehearsals for “The Ally,” a new play opening at the Public Theater in February.
They chose a location: Cedar Lakes Estate, a former summer camp turned event venue in Port Jervis, NY. The only available date that worked for the couple was the third anniversary of the attack on the US Capitol. “We have decided to rename January 6th,” Mr Radnor said.
Since their relationship began with a sound meditation ceremony, they planned to design the wedding weekend around the concept of “set and setting,” which in a psychedelic context refers to the interaction between a person's emotional and mental state and the physical environment.
The night before the wedding there was a dinner with ornamental mushrooms integrated into the centerpieces and at least one speech referencing Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. (Only seven therapists from Dr. Jacobs' family were present.) The guests wrote their intentions on cards and threw them into the fire.
Mr. Radnor strummed his guitar – the only other sound was the crackle of burning wood – as he sang lyrics he had written for his bride: “One day this will all be over, what's left will be the songs, that I sang to you.”
On the morning of the wedding there was yoga and then a (drug-free) sound meditation. And then – in the couple's most significant attempt at stimulating the senses – the ceremony was called to take place outside in the refreshing cool of dusk.
Not even a snowstorm that meteorologists had been predicting for days could thwart the couple's intentions. So their guests packed up and headed out into the evening storm.
The couple said they miscalculated when they thought the heavy snowfall would come later. “The snow was two things,” Mr. Radnor said. “Cold and fear-producing, but also cosmic and divine.”
Neither slippery driving conditions nor lumps of ice on their hair and beards could deter their guests. “We’re like the post office,” said Alyson Hannigan, one of the groom’s co-stars on “How I Met Your Mother.”
Pamela Fryman, the sitcom's director, had a request. “If they renew their vows,” she said, “maybe they can do it in the spring.”
In a flash of large, shimmering snowflakes, the bride, groom, their siblings, and their parents managed to walk down the aisle without falling.
The bride promised to give her groom space. “My first vow is freedom, which also means that we have the freedom to stay, or — if this relationship ever evolves to the point where it no longer serves our highest good — we have the freedom to leave,” she said him. “We know that it is choice, not obligation, that makes us stay exactly where we are.”
The groom cried as he committed himself. “I look into the infinity of your green eyes, I know that it wasn't because of any brokenness in me that I haven't married yet,” he said. “The truth is, I haven’t gotten married yet because,” he added, “I was waiting for you.”
The ceremony incorporated Jewish wedding traditions and was officiated by Jacob Azia, a friend of the couple and a pastor at Universal Life Church.
As guests defrosted by the large indoor fireplace, the newlyweds stripped off so the bride's snowy hair could be restyled, while the groom, in his first official act as husband, knelt at her feet and warmed her with a hairdryer.
Back in the candlelit lodge the reception took place. Nine friends and relatives gave speeches as the snow continued to fall and those who were not among the 115 guests who planned to stay overnight in cabins at the venue kept checking the weather and traffic apps on their phones.
Dr. Jacobs and Mr. Radnor tried to focus on the speeches and leave the logistics to the wedding planner and venue staff. “But energetically, in the room, we could feel the stress,” said Dr. Jacobs.
At around 10:30 p.m., an employee at the venue announced: the roads were impassable and everyone had to stay overnight. This included guests, the 10 members of the wedding band, the event planners, venue staff, and a New York Times reporter and photographer, for a total of 59 additional people.
Some were assigned upper bunk beds in rooms rented by the couple's friends for the weekend, while others slept in the venue owner's on-site apartment.
“When it was announced, 'Nobody's leaving here tonight,' people went into a little bit of surrender mode,” Radnor said. The band began playing the Beatles song “Oh!” Darling” and the bride and groom danced with abandon.
“It was as close to a psychedelic ceremony as you can get,” said Dr. Jacobs.
On this day
When January 6, 2024
Where Cedar Lakes Estate, Port Jervis, NY
The eve of the night before Two nights before the wedding, Mr. Radnor and Dr. Jacobs alone in a heated glass igloo overlooking the wedding venue grounds. Dr. Jacobs surprised Mr. Radnor with a collection of her voice notes from when they were together. “It was really special to hear how these previous versions of us got to know each other,” he said. “And then looking across the table and realizing where we were – just moments away from the wedding.”
Wedding swag Guests received welcome bags containing incense sticks, an incense bowl, CBD tincture and an “intention kit” with paper and a pen. “We find that setting an intention can be a helpful way to check in and calibrate your internal compass to true north,” the guide says.
Man's best man Nelson the dog, the couple's labradoodle, served as honorary best man (wearing a burgundy bow tie) and was accompanied by Seth Jacobs, one of Dr. Jacobs' brothers, led down the aisle.