In September 1988, Bronwyn was living in Brooklyn, New York, presenting a popular show on WFMU, an independent community radio station. “I played a lot of different music and wrote my own material, which included an obituary section called News of the Dead,” she says.
One day, after Bronwyn finished recording, the station manager showed her a comic strip submitted for the station’s programme guide. “When I glanced at the comic I thought the art looked great.” When she read the strip, she realised it was about her. “It included all these drawings of women, trying to guess what kind of woman I was. The final panel was a picture of the artist walking across a desert, asking if I’d marry him,” she laughs. “If he’d sent fan mail, I might have thought he was nuts, but I knew it was a flattering joke because it was sent to the programme guide, not me.”
Sean, who drew the strip, was living in Brooklyn and working as an illustrator. “I was a huge fan of her show,” he says. “She was so eclectic in her politics, like me. A friend of mine was a volunteer for the programme guide. When he asked me to draw something, I decided to focus on her show.”
Bronwyn called the number on the business card attached to the strip to thank him. “He didn’t pick up so I left a message on his answering machine and asked if he’d like to join a group of my friends at an experimental folk music show that night on the Lower East Side.”
When Sean returned home and got the message, he was astonished by the invitation. “I had only just come back from Manhattan, but I found the cleanest shirt I had and went straight back into the city.” When they met, things were a little awkward at first. “I knew lots about her from the show, and she knew nothing about me, so it was a strange dynamic,” he says.
Bronwyn says he was “more conventional-looking” than she had expected. “My friend said he was cute but I wasn’t sure.”
They shared a lift home and began to get to know one another better. “That’s when we really warmed up to each other and exchanged phone numbers,” she says. The next day he called her and they talked for three hours. “He was really grilling me,” she says, laughing. “I thought he was either ready to get serious in a relationship or out of his mind.”
After the call they arranged to meet at a bar in Brooklyn that night. Again, they talked for hours, realising how much they had in common. “It was 4.30am and I realised I was so attracted to her. We meshed so quickly,” says Sean.
Bronwyn felt the same. “There was this mental, emotional connection. We’re both weird in similar ways.”
Bronwyn was recently single and Sean was casually dating several women. “I told him he had to get rid of his girlfriends before I would go out with him,” she says. By October, they were a couple, and spent their time going to underground clubs in New York, and visiting museums and art galleries.
They married in Brooklyn in March 1991 and moved to their current home in Hastings-on-Hudson soon afterwards. Throughout their relationship, Sean has supported Bronwyn with the difficulties she experiences with prosopagnosia, or face blindness – the inability to recognise people’s faces. “It’s been challenging all my life, made me socially awkward and restricted my employment opportunities,” she says. “Sean has been wonderful because he’s like my seeing-face guide. He helps me to know who I’m talking to. I could never watch movies because I lost track of who’s who, but he’s able to explain them for me.” She also loves his talent and kindness. “He’s so reliable and goodhearted. I admire that a lot.”
Sean says they “haven’t stopped talking” since they met. “She’s way smarter than me and we are both quirky, in a way that made us feel desperately alone in the crowd before we met. But we really understand each other.”
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