Sophia Cohen and Harrison Waterstreet say there’s always been an invisible string between them – even before they were born. In 1992, when Sophia’s father, financier and New York Mets owner Steve Cohen, married her mother, a friend gave them a portrait painted by Harrison’s father, artist John Alexander, as a wedding gift.
Yet it would be two decades before they officially met. Sophia had just finished her freshman year at Brown University and decided to head out to the Hamptons with her roommate, Eugenia. Eugenia’s brother texted them to come to a house party – where, it turns out, Harrison was too. They briefly talked that night, but nothing more.
Three years and a college graduation later, Sophia started a job at The Gagosian Gallery. She quickly struck up a friendship with a co-worker around her age, Lily Mortimer. One day, Lily said she wanted to introduce Sophia to a close friend of hers: Harrison, who was now an agent at CAA.
Sophia was seeing someone at the time, so she and Harrison instead built up a friendship over the next few years. (That’s not to say there wasn’t a spark – in fact, it was very much apparent. “Harrison would shamelessly flirt with me even though I was in another relationship,” Sophia says, laughing.) Yet the invisible string kept tugging: One night, Sophia attended a dinner for her friend, artist Alexander Berggruen. Sat next to her was a talented ceramicist. Despite being strangers, they instantly hit it off. “Towards the end of the evening, the artist said, ‘I don’t usually do this, but I would love to set you up with my son.’ She then proceeded to show me a picture of… Harrison,” Sophia says.
Sophia, engaged at the time, politely declined. But several months later, she found herself single again just as the pandemic hit. When the summer started and it felt okay to socialise, Lily – as well as friends Bunny and Jake – pushed Sophia to finally consider the man who had been in her orbit for so long. “We finally went on our first date and never looked back,” she says. Three years later, Harrison proposed to Sophia at her family home in Connecticut amid a semi-circle of candles.
