Steven Patrick Lynch made Madison Ashley Greco laugh when he walked up to the counter at Anderson’s Frozen Custard in Tonawanda, N.Y., where she worked as a cashier, in January 2019.

“What would you recommend: the roast beef or the lemon ice?,” Lynch asked her, knowing he would order both.

“Well, one’s a dinner, and one’s a dessert,” she responded.

She already thought he was cute when he walked into the ice cream shop, but when he started ordering, his humor won her over. After Lynch paid with his credit card, she took notice of his name at the bottom of the receipt.

Greco went home after work that night and couldn’t stop thinking about him. She managed to find his X account and followed him. A few minutes later, he sent her a message: “Wow, I’m impressed.”

They had their first date five days later at the local shopping mall, walking around and people watching. “By the time we knew it, we were lapping around the mall for three or four hours,” Greco said. Two months later, he asked her to be his girlfriend.

At the time, Lynch, now 32, was about a year sober, and Greco, now 26, was supportive of his journey.

“Instead of going to the bar and getting a beer, I would just go to Anderson’s and get a custard,” he said. “It was awesome seeing my girl and visiting her at work.”

They soon discover an unexpected connection. They both had grown up watching wrestling with their siblings, and they even realized that they had been at the same World Wrestling Entertainment “Armageddon” event in Buffalo in 2008, when he was 14 and she was 9. But both had drifted away from the sport for years.

They rediscovered their love for wrestling, and in March 2020, they went to their first WWE event together. It was one of their last public outings before the Covid-19 pandemic. By June, they had moved into an apartment together in Buffalo.

“Being home and having so much more free time, we picked up where we left off as kids with watching weekly,” Lynch said. “Every Monday night was ‘Raw,’ Friday night was ‘SmackDown.’ Now, Tuesday, they have ‘NXT.’”

They also rewatched old events they were nostalgic about and got into wrestling reality TV shows, like “Total Divas,” “Total Bellas” and “Miz & Mrs.”

They love the theatrics of WWE.

Lynch, who graduated from Niagara University with a bachelor’s degree in sports management, always loved sports. Greco, an independent house cleaner, has always been a reality TV fan. “It’s kind of a meshing of the two together,” Lynch said of their interests. (He now cares for his grandparents full time. They had invited him to move into their home when he became sober.)

[Click here to binge read this week’s featured couples.]

At the 50th birthday celebration of Greco’s mother in Rincon, Puerto Rico, in October 2024, Lynch, who had said he couldn’t be there because of work, surprised her on the last day of the trip with a pear-shaped diamond ring by Neil Lane, the jewelry designer for “The Bachelor,” a show she loves.

Shortly after the proposal, in January 2025, Lynch was diagnosed with a bladder cyst and underwent surgery to remove it in April. He was out of work for four months. “I had enough to pay all our bills and make ends meet, but definitely not enough to pay what most people are paying for weddings these days,” said Lynch, adding that they otherwise “definitely would have started saving for a wedding and making plans a lot sooner.”

But that turned out to be “a minor setback for a major comeback,” he said.

The “major comeback” came on April 16, when they were married in Las Vegas by Michael Mizanin, better known as The Miz and Greco’s favorite wrestler.

After spotting a post on X about getting married during WrestleMania, the annual professional wrestling event, Greco applied. About two hours after she submitted an application on a Thursday, she received a phone call explaining that they were selected to be married the following Thursday. They immediately began scrambling to book flights.

The ceremony, organized by ESPN and WWE, was held in a wrestling ring set up at the Viva Las Vegas Wedding Chapel, where 16 friends and relatives cheered as The Miz led the ceremony. Kalin Ivanov, an ordained minister at the chapel, signed the marriage license.

After the ceremony, the couple had an impromptu celebration at In-N-Out Burger before hopping from casino to casino, Lynch wearing a WWE belt the entire time. Greco had proposed back to him with the belt in January 2025. “He deserved his special moment, too, because he blew me away with our engagement,” she said.

Lynch fully embraced the excitement of the moment. “I just felt like a million bucks everywhere we went,” he said. “I thought, ‘I am the WWE champion.’ I had my belt on. I had my dream girl on my arm. And we just got married.”

Sometimes, when the mood strikes or the outfit is right, Michaela Jaé Rodriguez’s mother will offer to loan her a very special diamond-encrusted peace sign necklace.

Rodriguez, who stars in the new Broadway revival of “The Rocky Horror Show,” wore the necklace when she found out she was nominated for an Emmy in 2021 for her role in “Pose.” (Rodriguez was the first openly trans woman to be nominated for a lead acting category; in 2022, she became the first trans actress to win a Golden Globe.)

In an interview that has been edited and condensed, Rodriguez dives deeper into the hand-me-down-and-around peace sign and talks about her loved ones who have imbued it with their magic.

Tell me about your necklace.

It’s this peace sign that my mother lends to me. She always wants her pieces back, but she lets me wear them a good amount.

I’m not married yet, but you know that tradition of something old, something new? That’s what I feel when I get it. It just feels like she’s handing over, crazy enough, a legacy and a lineage. The people that gave it to her were people that were really monumental in her life. My Aunt Nita, she was this rambunctious, spirited energy. God bless her, she passed away from cancer, but she still kept her juice. And my uncle, I had such a close relationship with him. He was a Capricorn, which makes it all the better because we’re Capricorns together.

What kind of events might prompt your mom to loan you the necklace?

When I’m going out for a show, or when I’m going for a big event, or when we’re traveling. She usually gives it to me for monumental moments in my life.

Is the necklace always with you, even if you’re not wearing it?

I don’t leave it alone. Usually it’s with me, and I’m always just checking it. Touch, for me, is a big thing. It’s a very spiritual and magical thing for me. Feeling it makes me know that there is some strength there. But if it’s gone, I feel like there’s kind of a separation. The only way I feel better is if it’s in my mom’s hands or if it’s in her possession again, honestly, because I know that it’s in a safe space and that energy is being harnessed in the right way.

Are there other people it’s connected to in your life?

I think my grandmother, more than anything, because my grandmother passed away in Covid, and my mom always wore it in that time. My Aunt Kim because she had it in the time when we were doing “Pose,” and my Aunt Kim passed away. My Aunt Debbie, too, who passed away from cancer.

Those are the people who are imbued in it, latched onto it, or a piece of their spirit.

Do you think about passing the peace sign necklace down someday?

Well, one, I feel like it would have to be a coming-of-age gift. I’d have to watch them grow and say, “You’ve gotten your stripes of growth, you’ve done a great job, and this is a really important piece to a lot of us.” If I had a daughter or a son, I’d probably give it to one of them, and more likely my daughter because, you know: mama, daughter, little baby girl. Or one of my nieces, and I have one in my mind already. I would probably give it to her, and I would just let her know that this is a piece of jewelry that has been handed down by very powerful women, and women who have instilled a lot of strength in me.