When their venue burned down in the Eaton Fire five weeks before their wedding, Marnina Schon Wirtschafter and Micah Aaron O’Konis did what any comedic musical duo would do: They wrote a song about it.
“We made a plan for rain, but we didn’t think to plan for something this insane,” reads the lyrics to a song they wrote called “Our Wedding Venue Burned Down in Altadena.”
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Mx. Schon, which is the last name she uses professionally, and Mx. O’Konis both identify as genderqueer. Mx. O’Konis also identifies as nonbinary — and they have a song about that, too. In “People Think We’re Straight,” Mx. O’Konis sings, “Please don’t call me ‘bro,’ please use they/them pronouns if you heckle me during the show.”
Mx. Schon was only mildly interested when she matched with Mx. O’Konis on Hinge in February 2016. Mx. O’Konis had two strikes against them: They had attended a rival college (USC to Mx. Schon’s UCLA), and lived across town (no small thing in Los Angeles).
Nevertheless, the instant rapport they had on the phone changed Mx. Schon’s mind. Both are creatives: Mx. O’Konis is a writer, performer, guitarist and composer. They wrote a musical about gun control called “More Guns!” that was picked up by Second City Hollywood and ran on Saturday nights for two years. Mx. Schon is an actor who starred in “More Guns!”, as well as a violinist and writer.
Both worked in Jewish education: Mx. Schon as the program coordinator at IKAR, a nondenominational synagogue in Los Angeles, and Mx. O’Konis as a Sunday school teacher at the Silverlake Independent JCC in Los Angeles.
What also helped Mx. Schon agree to a first date was that Mx. O’Konis had a car and would drive to her. “From the moment I picked Marnina up, we hit the ground running, and had our conversational rhythm,” Mx. O’Konis said.
Mx. Schon was due at a friend’s birthday party, so they had dinner nearby at El Coyote Cafe, a landmark Mexican restaurant. Mx. Schon then brought Mx. O’Konis to the party at Da Poetry Lounge in the Fairfax neighborhood, introducing them to her friends.
They ended the night over drinks at the Surly Goat in West Hollywood, where they shared their first kiss.
When Mx. O’Konis got home, they spun around singing, as does Will Ferrell in “Elf,” “I’m in love, I’m in love, I don’t care who knows it,” to their roommate, while Mx. Schon canceled her pending Hinge dates.
Their creative connection soon became part of their romantic one. Later that year, they took a class together with the Upright Citizens Brigade improv group. They moved into the Los Feliz neighborhood together in 2017. In 2020, when Covid shut down theaters, they began writing and recording songs together.
Now called Couplet, the duo will appear daily in the Assembly Festival lineup of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival this August.
They proposed to each other in November 2023 while out having tacos and cocktails at Nativo in their neighborhood. Mx. Schon’s proposal included a crossword puzzle she made of their inside jokes. Mx. O’Konis surprised her by proposing in the doorway of the restaurant before they left.
Mx. Schon graduated with a bachelor’s in communications; Mx. O’Konis with a bachelor’s in music and composition. The couple, who are both 31, now live in the Highland Park neighborhood.
Rabbi Sharon Brous, of IKAR, married them at Valentine, a downtown events space, on Feb. 16 — the ninth anniversary of their first date — in front of 177 guests. The venue had given them a deep discount after the William D. Davies Memorial Building in Altadena’s Charles S. Farnsworth Park, their original venue, burned down.
Mx. Schon wore a beaded headpiece her mother wore at her wedding, with a flowy white jumpsuit she bought secondhand on Poshmark. Mx. O’Konis wore a white suit.
“You’re my favorite collaborator,” Mx. Schon said in her vows. “You accompany me in every way imaginable.”
“I fell in love with your laugh first,” Mx. O’Konis said in theirs. “If you wanted to, you could start a cult with your laughter. You shouldn’t do that, but you could.”
The flower girls carried California wildflower seed packets to the huppah. The packets were passed to guests before the breaking of the glass, with a plea to help reseed Los Angeles.
“Out in the world things are bleak, look at all the bad stuff, from just this week,” the couple sang to their guests at the reception. “But maybe the community we’ve gathered here can turn around this broken year.”
