Dr. Courtney Pedersen and Eddie Bearnot, who both work to promote health in others, overcame a medical crisis of their own.
Dr. Courtney Jo Pedersen saw Edward Collin Bearnot as more of an obstacle than a potential suitor when he offered to buy her a drink during a meet-up of Yale’s graduate men’s and women’s rugby teams in September 2015.
“He was standing between me and the dance floor,” said Dr. Pedersen, who had been wearing a fleece Hello Kitty onesie for a pajama-themed evening with her teammates.
She declined the drink, but the two started talking. Mr. Bearnot, who had just started his M.B.A. at the university, shared his idea for a nutrition-focused company in Bangladesh, where he had been living for the past three years.
Dr. Pedersen, who was pursuing her master’s degree in public health, was not convinced. She had seen companies “push for profit without seeming to care much for the local population” when she was a preventive health volunteer with the Peace Corps in Senegal, and was concerned Mr. Bearnot’s company would function similarly.
“She gave me a hard time,” Mr. Bearnot said. “And I was super into it.”
Mr. Bearnot saved his number in Dr. Pedersen’s phone under the contact name “Eddie a.k.a. The Best Looking Rugby Player” and texted her a few days later thanking her for her candor. They made plans to meet up two weeks later for what Dr. Pedersen thought would be another in-depth discussion of global development ethics, and what Mr. Bearnot hoped would be a date.
Both turned out to be right. During their eight-hour first date — drinks, dinner at Modern Apizza and more drinks — Mr. Bearnot, who grew up in Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y., and Dr. Pedersen, who was raised in Bloomingdale, Ohio, bonded over their shared desire to improve health around the world in a thoughtful way. “It was really nice to meet someone with a similar vision,” Dr. Pedersen said.
Dr. Pedersen, 35, attended Stanford University School of Medicine and is now a resident physician in the department of emergency medicine at Brown University. Mr. Bearnot, 33, is the co-founder and chief executive officer of the company he pitched to Dr. Pedersen the night they met: Frontier Nutrition, which manufactures affordable, nutritious foods to prevent malnutrition in Bangladesh.
They dated while at Yale, but the distance between Palo Alto, Calif., where Dr. Pedersen moved to attend medical school in 2016 and Dhaka, Bangladesh, where Mr. Bearnot moved to start his company in 2017, initially prevented them from committing to a long-term relationship.