Rachel Payne, Matthew Snyder

Rachel Godwin Payne and Matthew Filip Snyder were married yesterday by Rabbi Burt Aaron Siegel at the Union Theological Seminary in Manhattan. The Rev. Teresa Payne Gocha, an Episcopal priest and cousin of the bride, participated.

Ms. Payne, 38, is keeping her name. She is the coordinator of preschool services at the Brooklyn Public Library, where she is in charge of the library's early literacy program. She graduated from Hampshire College and received two master's degrees, one in early childhood and elementary education from Bank Street College of Education, and one in library science from the C. W. Post campus of Long Island University.

She is the daughter of Jensene G. Payne and the Rev. John W. Payne of Alva, Fla. Her father, a Disciples of Christ minister, retired as the senior pastor of the Park Avenue Christian Church in Manhattan. He is also an author of "Happily Intermarried: Authoritative Advice for Joyous Jewish-Christian Marriage" (Macmillan, 1988). Her mother, also retired, was the assistant for academic and curricular affairs to the dean of humanities and the arts at Hunter College in Manhattan.

Mr. Snyder, 39, is an archivist for the music division of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts in Manhattan. He also plays jazz clarinet and saxophone, and is a member of the Shul Band that performs at the Shul of New York. He graduated from Rutgers and received two master's degrees, in music from Indiana University, and in library science from Queens College.

He is a son of Harriet Snyder and Robert Snyder of Cherry Hill, N.J. His mother, who is retired, was a visiting part-time English lecturer at Rutgers in Camden, N.J. His father is the associate dean for research at the school of pharmacy at Rutgers in Piscataway, where he is also a professor of toxicology.

Ms. Payne and Mr. Snyder met in 2005 on Match.com, but online dating turned out to be both a catalyst and a threat to their relationship.

Mr. Snyder said he became a bit carried away by all the dating opportunities. "I was like a kid in a candy store," he said. But dating multiple women at once, he said, "was stressful and expensive."

He realized he needed to pick one person, but whom? "I flipped a coin, and she lost," he said of Ms. Payne. He broke up with her after two months of dating.

"I told friends, ‘No more musicians,'" Ms. Payne recalled.

But six months later, he was missing her. "I was most myself with her," he said. He called her again, "kind of begging," he said. She was wary, telling him he had some explaining to do.

"The first date was not a date, it was more of a summit meeting," he said.

As it turned out, she was seeing a couple of other men at the time. "He was playing the field the first time, so I was not going to put all my eggs in one basket," she said.

But he won her over through sheer tenacity, she said, and his commitment to their relationship. "When I have a problem, it's not my problem, it's our problem," she said.