Nice [Jewish] Ending

Ms. Turner swore off dating. So she barely noticed Avi Klein when they were introduced a month later at a sketch comedy show in Los Angeles. That is, until he appeared on stage shirtless. “He had huge biceps,” she said.

“I’m shameless about my need for attention,” said Mr. Klein, the youngest of four siblings who grew up in Philadelphia. He was then a struggling actor in Los Angeles, working in sales at a Barnes & Noble store. Immediately smitten by Ms. Turner, he wrangled an invitation from a mutual friend to a group outing the following week.

They discovered they had much in common, having both graduated from Jewish day schools and from top colleges, she from Cornell, and he from the University of Chicago.

But that wasn’t necessarily a good thing.

“He was everything I was running away from,” said Ms. Turner, a Washington native who works in Los Angeles as a line producer for television shows like “Dance War” on ABC or music and comedy specials for HBO. “I came from a geeky, religious family,” she explained, where conversation at dinner was a competitive sport, ranging in topic from astrophysics to science fiction trivia.

Pretty and playful, Ms. Turner yearned to be one of the “cool kids,” she said. Whereas Mr. Klein was a self-confessed nerd who used to wear a Star Trek communicator pin — or “unisex broach,” as he put it.

She let him know that she was not a science-fiction fan and probably never would be.

“There was something about her resistance that was very charming to me,” Mr. Klein, 28, recalled. But when it came time to ask for her phone number he “chickened out,” he said.

A disappointed Ms. Turner recalled “standing there, twirling my hair with my fingers, and he said good night and walked away.” It took an embarrassing phone call to their mutual friend to obtain her number. His reward was what they both described as a great first date.

And then her Colombian ex-boyfriend called, telling her he wanted her back.

For several weeks she deliberated about what to do, while Mr. Klein surprised himself by taking it in stride. “I wasn’t needy or neurotic,” he said with pride. He was simply confident. “I said ‘I’m not worried about us. I know we’re going to end up together.’ ”

She was unconvinced yet comforted, and the ex was soon an ex again.

But when Mr. Klein suggested making their relationship exclusive, Ms. Turner balked, still wary of being hurt. “Every time I jumped into something I got dumped,” she said.

He implored her to trust him and trust their relationship. “I’ve never felt so sure or so right about something,” he said. But it required that she abandon her image of herself and of whom she belonged with — and it wasn’t a sci-fi guy with limited income.

Though he had taken a management position at Helio, a cellphone company, he said he told her, “I’m not going to be the guy who goes and works at a hedge fund.” He added, “You can be with me or you can go look for that guy.”

She stayed put. “He’s always been the person that’s taken me in his arms and reassured me,” she said. She realized that “having someone take care of me emotionally was so much more valuable than having someone take care of me financially.”

She committed fully to her feelings for him and began taking pride in their eccentric quirks, like splashing through rain puddles or singing Hanukkah songs when they can’t fall asleep at night.

On March 1, she joined one more bridal party, this time in a beaded lace gown and homemade veil. Rabbi A. Nathan Abramowitz, the bride’s godfather, led the ceremony at the National Press Club in Washington, and Rabbi Gerald Weider, Mr. Klein’s godfather, assisted.

Then 180 of their 200 guests joined them on the dance floor for a 20-minute hora. The geeky and the sleek merged in a swirl of ball gowns and tattoos as the newly married couple embraced their similarities and each other.

“Everything I was running away from lives inside of me,” the bride said.

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