Negarin Sadat Sadr Hashemi Nejad was, as she put it, an “incredibly miserable” fashion designer living in San Francisco in November 2019 when a friend invited her to a holiday party to meet someone who was exactly her type: tall, blond and blue-eyed.
She was still reeling from a tough breakup, and the friend, Malika Cantor, only knew one person who fit what Sadr was looking for: her friend, Matthew Ezekiel Sornson, a founder of a data start-up company called Clearbit. He was hosting the company party that night.
Sornson had no idea about this scheme. So when he was introduced to Sadr at the bar, he kept the interaction brief because he had about 350 guests to greet. But she felt “ignored” by him, Sornson said.
“I became very bitter,” she said. “I went outside and smoked like 35 cigarettes.”
That night, she “angrily followed him” on Instagram, she said, and he followed her back. Though she thought better of it and unfollowed him the next morning, he spent the next two years catching glimpses of her “cool life.” This included her travels, her colorful “Italian grandma” style and the growth of her cashmere brand, Negarin London, now called Garin.
In February 2021, the two matched on Bumble. Sadr, 37, recalled thinking, “Oh, this guy, from that party. I guess I’ll go on a date with him.” He turned out to be “quite chatty” and “much nicer” this time around, and the two messaged frequently while traveling.
They met in person on April 13 when Sornson, 36, went over to Sadr’s apartment for dinner with Cantor, the friend who had introduced them two years earlier. Sadr cooked gheimeh, an Iranian stew with eggplant and lentils, “which is hilarious because I barely cook,” she said.
Though her two guests were drinking during the dinner, Sadr stayed sober, “maybe on purpose,” she said.
Their dinner party ended in the early hours of the following day. At the door, she asked him, “When is our next date?” He proposed sailing.
So, a few days later, they hit the San Francisco Bay on a stormy day, and despite it being her first time sailing, she didn’t get seasick. (It must have been beginner’s luck because since then, she consistently does.) Sornson was impressed: “It definitely took me from interested to like, ‘Wow,’” he said.
In May, Sadr, who was born in Tehran and grew up in Bethesda, Md., became a U.S. citizen, and the two went to Mexico City — their fourth date — and became official.
“I felt like she could keep up with me,” Sornson said, adding that as a physically active person, he wanted someone who could run, hike and sail with him. “The energies matched, the ambitions matched.”
They bonded over the shared challenges of being founders, especially during periods when their companies struggled, and they supported each other’s endeavors. (The couple have since changed their last names to Sadr Sornson.)
Sadr, who graduated from Hobart and William Smith Colleges with bachelor’s degrees in economics and art studio, weighed in on Sornson’s venture fund’s investment strategies. He, in turn, helped her navigate marketing. (Sornson, who grew up in Michigan, pursued a degree in general studies at Western Michigan University.)
In November 2021, they moved from San Francisco to an apartment in New York for her business. The next month, they spent 31 days apart while Sornson and four friends sailed across the Atlantic Ocean.
With no internet on board, he exchanged long letters with Sadr through the vessel’s shared satellite email. Their correspondence read like a romance novel. “I miss your touch more than I have since the first few days away from you,” he wrote in one letter.
In August 2022, Sornson proposed in Copenhagen. “Everything is fabulous and rainbow-y, then we move back to the States,” after a long stretch of travel, Sadr said. They started wedding planning, and a date was set for September 2023.
But then, Sadr made a shocking discovery.
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Forty-four days before the wedding, she noticed unrecognizable payments on their joint bank account. She confronted Sornson about it.
“I didn’t know the details,” she said, but “I had a feeling like something dodgy was happening.” They started daily therapy sessions to decide whether to go through with the wedding.
A week into therapy, the truth finally surfaced: He was addicted to Adderall, and it was the first time Sadr had heard that he was taking it at all.
“Who is this person I’m dating?” she thought.
When they had returned to New York after their engagement the previous year, Sornson’s business was struggling. In February 2023, he reassumed control as chief executive and began working 100 to 120 hours a week. The pressure to turn the company around was relentless. He gradually developed an Adderall addiction to keep up with the pace.
While all this was going on, Sadr was planning their 200-person wedding in Mallorca, Spain. There was an emotional distance between them in the months leading up to the wedding.
“We were kind of living in our own worlds,” he said.
She called off the wedding and notified their guests. She staged an intervention and informed his family and close friends, who flew to New York.
Sornson said he knew he had to turn his life around. He moved into his parents’ home in Brighton, Mich., where he prioritized recovering for two months.
During this time, he also focused on the process of selling his start-up. On the very day they decided to separate, he received a letter of intent to purchase it from a Boston-based company.
Sornson traveled to Boston a few times during those two months for in-person meetings. During those trips, they saw each other, including in early October, when he signed up for a biathlon in Central Park as an excuse to visit New York. She ran the race with him, but the tension was still high between them, she said.
Five weeks later, Sadr found out she was pregnant.
On a FaceTime call, she told him about the news, holding up three positive pregnancy tests. He was at a closing dinner in San Francisco for the start-up deal. In a stroke of miraculous timing, he successfully sold his company.
He got on a flight to New York the next morning.
Sornson knew he had two paths forward. “One is much easier,” he said, referring to the scenario in which they would break up. “I start fresh and don’t have to dig out of this hole. The other is harder, but for me, felt like the right thing to do.”
He added, “I never stopped wanting to be with Negarin.” He also really wanted to be a father.
When the couple met up, he made a set of commitments, including making amends, and she decided to give him another chance and start a family together.
“Love is never enough,” she said. “You need commitment. The only reason we came together and it worked is because Matt was very committed to make this relationship and his sobriety work.”
But she didn’t ignore the risk that he might fall back into old patterns. Sadr considered her father’s advice: “Everybody deserves a second chance, but not a third chance,” she said, and she made that very clear to Sornson.
He stayed true to his word and bloomed in his second act. In June 2024, their daughter, Artie, was born.
“She blessed us,” Sadr said. “She slept well, she ate well, good attitude. We weren’t like surviving parents, we were like thriving parents.”
Sornson, who now runs an education start-up called Legend.org, proved himself to be an involved, dedicated and passionate father who cooks breakfast for Artie every morning, takes charge of bedtime, meal preps on weekends, and takes her to zoos, museums and parks. They worked on rebuilding trust, and they made a good team taking care of their daughter. And, they never stopped loving each other.
In September 2024, they moved into a new apartment in Chelsea — a clean slate, free from the weight of their past home.
And in August 2025, the wedding was back on. It felt like it could close this heavy and tumultuous chapter of their lives. “The wedding was an opportunity to show who we are and the family that we’d become,” he said.
They were married at Brooklyn Borough Hall on May 5 by Tanya Litochevsky, a city clerk.
Their wedding celebration was two months earlier, on March 15, at LeCrans Hotel and Spa in Crans-Montana, Switzerland, with a traditional Persian ceremony in the snow led by Sadr’s mother (the theme was “Persian winter wonderland”). Dinner, Persian music and dancing followed.
To kick off the weekend, Sornson gave a welcome speech where he was open about their journey together. “We were in a room full of people that helped us get through it, and that was quite emotional,” he said. “I think a lot of what I learned in recovery is the more you talk about your shame, the less powerful it is. So much of addiction is about hiding parts of yourself. And so I’m trying really hard to not hide myself.” In October, he will celebrate three years of sobriety.
Now, they are often the first couple friends call when trying to navigate challenges in their own relationships. By tackling such a difficult issue head-on, they said they have become a testament to the fact that relationships can survive, and even thrive, after a crisis. “It is possible,” she said, “but you need two committed people.”
On This Day
When March 15, 2026
Where LeCrans Hotel and Spa in Crans-Montana, Switzerland
A 59-Hour Journey Because of strikes launched across Iran by the United States and Israel in February and March, Sadr’s father, who was in Tehran at the time, embarked on a complicated journey that involved multiple cars, planes, and crossing the Iranian border into Armenia on foot, in order to attend the wedding. “It was a family reunion after 10 years,” Sadr said. He returned to Iran a week after the wedding.
Sofreh Aghd The couple were seated near the traditional Persian wedding spread. Each element carried a meaning. A mirror reflected a bright future, candles represented warmth and energy, bread signified abundance, honey symbolized sweetness between the couple and a poetry book by Hafez, a Persian poet, offered spiritual grounding.
The Flower Girls Their daughter, Artie, wore an ivory coat with a fur collar designed by Sadr, who matched her in a strapless dress with a two-foot train she had designed for the ceremony they had originally planned. Artie walked down the aisle to “Spring 1” by Max Richter with two cousins.
