Joseph and Ibi Zoboi’s courtship didn’t include romantic dinners, long flirty interactions, hand holding, kissing, or even much talking for that matter. “Usually there is an exchange of numbers, you call and then you go out. That’s what I understood it to be, but Joseph was different,” says Ibi, who worked alongside Joseph, at the time an art educator and set designer at the Girls & Boys Harbor in East Harlem in September of 2000. “It felt like someone who had a crush on you, but couldn’t approach you. We never kissed or even talked on the phone before he proposed,” she explains.
The pair didn’t engage in the traditional dating and intimacy dance. Instead, a few pivotal moments and exchanges would surprisingly be the catalyst for their ongoing 12-year marriage.
Like the one time, for example, Joseph asked Ibi to join him on a walk. “She had no idea where we were going, but she just went along with me,” recalls Joseph. He took her from Harlem all the way to downtown Brooklyn. “In my mind, her sharing that experience with me was a symbolic metaphor for marriage and life. Not everyone can make that journey with you, and she never complained.”
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