Mr. Kevin Neil (STH’21) Featured in The NYT
The following is an excerpt from Rosalie R. Radomsky‘s “A Hot Priest? Definitely a ‘Handsome’ One,” published on June 10, 2022 in The New York Time.
A Hot Priest? Definitely a ‘Handsome’ One.
Annalise Deal and Kevin Neil met for coffee to discuss becoming Episcopal priests. The spirit also moved them to start dating.
June 10, 2022
Neither Kevin Gordon Neil nor Annalise Brittany Deal were looking for romance when they were introduced by a mutual friend in February 2020.
Ms. Deal, whose relationship with another “Kevin” had ended six months earlier, had doubts about dating anyone else with the name. Mr. Neil, who was studying at Boston University School of Theology, was seriously entertaining the idea of becoming a monk.
“I was hanging out with monks at a monastery in Cambridge,” he said, “and stayed in their guesthouse twice a month.”
But both had told their mutual friend — his former high school girlfriend and her friend from college — that they had a calling to become an Episcopal priest and, knowing this, she decided to connect the two.
“Not too many young people become Episcopal priests,” said Mr. Neil, 27, who met Ms. Deal, 25, at a coffee shop in Boston soon after they were introduced.
At the very least, Ms. Deal thought he could offer her guidance. From Atherton, Calif., she graduated magna cum laude from Boston College and was then a teaching fellow at the Epiphany School, an Episcopal school for low-income families in Boston.
“I didn’t know the Episcopal scene in Boston very well,” Ms. Deal said. She saw Mr. Neil, who at the time was a pastor for the homeless at the Cathedral Church of St. Paul in Boston, as a way in.
Mr. Neil, who is from Westborough, Mass., graduated summa cum laude from Gordon College in Wenham, Mass., and holds a master of divinity degree magna cum laude from Boston University. At the coffee shop, he found Ms. Deal “super-engaging, interesting and funny,” he said. “I wanted to see her again.”