Celebrating an unconditional love

June 12 and 23, 2023, in Williamstown and Sicklerville, N.J.

As Alexus poured drinks on a May 2018 night, a stylish stranger walked into her Runnemede bar and disappeared into the crowd.

After her shift, she took a seat next to a favorite Phily Diner & Sport Bar regular to unwind and the stranger reappeared next to her customer — they were friends. “Why don’t you sit with us?” Alexus suggested.

Their now-mutual friend, Jerry, introduced Joe to Alexus and the three of them talked for the next few hours. By 30 minutes in, the connection between Joe and Alexus was obvious.

He loved her smile and her sense of humor. “From everything we were talking about, it was clear we had a lot in common with each other,” Joe said. Among their commonalities: love for the University of North Carolina Tar Heels.

Before heading home, Alexus told Joe she was working again the next night. “Come back and I’ll be able to talk to you a little bit more,” she said. He did come back, but the bar was so busy they hardly got to speak. Joe went home, found Alexus on Instagram, and DM’d for her number. They texted daily for a week and a half, then met for lunch at Bertucci’s in Sicklerville, a date Alexus describes as “casual and good.”

The slow burn of getting to know each other continued through mid-June. Then Alexus spent two weeks on a birthday trip to Hawaii and the time difference meant fewer texts. They missed each other. Joe picked her up at the airport and they started seeing each other multiple times a week.

In mid-July, Joe, who is from Turnersville, asked Alexus, from Marlton, to be his girlfriend. Two weeks later, he introduced her to his family — nearly all of them.

“I thought it was just going to be a regular family dinner, but it was his grandma’s 80th birthday,” Alexus said. “It was not just his [six] siblings and his parents, but also his aunts and uncles and his grandparents. I realized then it was a big deal.”

A very big deal, said Joe.

“She was the first girl I introduced to my family,” he said. “They all loved her right away.”

So much so that Alexus was given a standing invite to the twice-monthly dinners with Joe’s mother, Lisa, father, Joe Sr., and the rest of the Murphy crew. When Joe, who was then a pharmacy technician, had to work overnights, Alexus went to the family dinners without him.

Her mother, Chirita, lives in North Carolina and her brother, Omar, in Hawaii. While it took a bit longer for Joe to meet them in person, they loved him right away, too. “My mom claims she knew the first time she met Joe that he was the one, that she could tell how well we meshed together, and that I was genuinely happy,” Alexus said.

In April 2020, the couple moved to a Pine Hill, N.J., apartment, where they live with Sammy, a 14-year-old cockapoo who has been with Alexus since her teens.

Joe, who is now 30, is a pharmacy liaison at Jefferson University Hospital and Alexus, now 29, is a digital marketing manager with Flywheel Digital.

“I love how calm and cool he is — he’s more levelheaded than me when it comes to making decisions,” Alexus said of Joe. “He will also support me no matter what my decision is.”

“I love her drive and her work ethic, how hard she works every day to really help put us in a good place, and how motivated she is for everything,” said Joe.

Joe asked Alexus to prepare for a June 12, 2021, surprise birthday party for his sister, to be held at his parents’ home. To get her in the neighborhood without spoiling the surprise, Joe said, everyone was meeting in a nearby park for a family portrait.

“We get there, and it was just us and his one sister and her husband,” Alexus remembers. Joe’s sister, Melissa, suggested taking a few photos before the rest of the family arrived.

Alexus was happily posing with Joe “when he looked at me and dropped down on one knee,” she remembered.

“I got right into it — no lead-up,” Joe said. “Just, ‘Will you marry me?’ ”

Alexus said yes, then realized the faux photo shoot was not for her future sister-in-law’s benefit, but for hers. Then she considered the date — June 12 — and its meaning for her and Joe. “It’s the day interracial marriage became legal in all 50 states,” she said, with the 1967 U.S. Supreme Court’s unanimous decision in Loving v. Virginia.

There was indeed a party at Joe’s parents’: a celebration of their engagement. The first person Alexus saw was her mother, who Joe flew in from North Carolina as a surprise.

Joe was raised Catholic and Alexus, who had never been active in church, decided to convert. She spent much of 2022 in classes to learn about the faith, then the couple took pre-Cana classes together. They wanted to be married in the church, and wanted the Rev. Sanjai Devis, who led their classes, to perform the ceremony.

Alexus and Joe were wed before a handful of family and friends at Our Lady of Peace in Williamstown on the anniversary of their engagement and the historic court decision that made their marriage possible: June 12.

On June 23, the couple held a second ceremony and a reception for 155 at Brigalias in Sicklerville. Instead of a lighting a unity candle, they did a unity shot — a nod to their meeting in a bar. Joe threw back tequila, which is Alexus’ favorite, and she drank whiskey, his favorite.

In the vows they wrote, Alexus noted how much she loves watching Joe’s passion when he explains the rules of hockey. “And I promised to love him unconditionally through the ups and downs,” she said. Joe promised to always fill her water glass before bed and told her, “When I say I love you most, I don’t mean I love you more than you love me; I mean I love you more than anything that could ever come between us.”

“Right after our ceremony when we were walking out together, there was this joyous feeling, ‘We’re married!’ ” Alexus said. “Even though we were already legally married, there was the relief of all the planning being done, and it was time to have photos taken and then just enjoy.”

At the reception, the DJ played pop, rap, hip-hop, and oldies, and the dance floor stayed packed. That is, until the end of the night, when planner Zupenda Davis and some of the bridal attendants gracefully told guests the reception was ending just a few moments early.

“That left just us in the big ballroom,” Joe said. As the DJ played “The Bones,” by Maren Morris, the couple shared the last dance of the night with only each other.