Evan (left) and Aaron, Upper West Side restaurant workers competing to become “America’s Favorite Couple”
Evan has spent nearly 15 years working at one of the Upper West Side’s longtime Italian spots, long enough that plenty of regulars know him by name. This week he’s hoping some of those regulars will return the favor.
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He and his fiancé Aaron are quarterfinalists in “America’s Favorite Couple,” a national online competition run by the professional fundraising company Colossal. As of Sunday they were sitting in second place in their quarterfinal group. Voting in the round closes Thursday at 10 p.m.Evan works at Salumeria Rosi, the Northern Italian restaurant and salumi shop at 283 Amsterdam Avenue near West 73rd Street that’s been in the neighborhood since 2008. Aaron works at Westville, the market-vegetable-forward chain that took over the former Artie’s Delicatessen space at 2290 Broadway in 2024.
The couple met about three years ago through a coincidence they’re happy to own up to on their competition profile: they’d both dated the same person. They started talking afterward and spent the early months going back and forth between Manhattan and southern New Jersey before Aaron moved in about six months in. “Consistent not conditional,” is how they describe the relationship now.
The winning couple takes home $20,000, appears in a “Variety” advertorial, and gets dinner in the Hollywood Hills with Jeff and Emilie Goldblum, Ted Danson and Mary Steenburgen, and Charlie Day and Mary Elizabeth Ellis. Evan and Aaron say the money would go toward their wedding, which they’re weighing between Wyoming and New York, with a first dance ambitious enough that they’ve floated pyrotechnics.
Anyone can cast one free vote every 24 hours. Additional votes come through donations, which go to Action Initiative Team, a 501(c)(3) that grants the money to the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank and Oceana after the competition wraps. Per the competition rules, 36.5% comes off the top in competition fees, along with variable costs including payment processing, operating and prize costs.
Their profile page is here, and voting runs through Thursday.
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