Barry Robert Pump was visibly stressed on his first date with Shreyans Goenka in July 2024, after President Joe Biden announced his withdrawal from the presidential race. Pump, a senior adviser and parliamentarian on the Democratic staff of the House Committee on Homeland Security, was enmeshed in politics, and his phone was buzzing with messages.
Still, Goenka wasn’t put off. “Even though the political world was on fire, Barry put his phone face down and focused on me,” he said.
Goenka had invited Pump to meet him at Maxwell Park, a wine bar in Washington’s Shaw neighborhood, after they matched on Hinge a few days earlier and hit it off.
The date was a surprise to Pump, who had given up on finding love. “My post-pandemic dating life wasn’t going anywhere, and I made a pact with myself,” he said. “I was going to delete Hinge and just settle into bachelorhood.”
Goenka was more optimistic. “Even though I had no luck after years of dating, I was determined to not give up hope,” he said.
Despite being distracted, Pump was equally taken by Goenka. “I walked in without any expectations — it was going to be my last Hinge date, after all,” he said. “But Shreyans was interesting and had such a Zen-like demeanor.”
Over glasses of red Burgundy, they talked for two hours about their upbringings, careers and aspirations.
“The conversation went everywhere and never stalled,” Goenka said.
Pump added, “For two people from such different backgrounds, we had a surprising amount in common, including a penchant for meticulous planning.”
At the time, Goenka, 36, was renting an apartment in downtown Washington. He is a marketing professor at Virginia Tech’s Pamplin College of Business. He told Pump that he had grown up in New Delhi and moved to the United States at 18 for college. He earned a bachelor’s degree in economics and psychology from the University of Pennsylvania. He also has a Ph.D. in marketing from Cornell.
Pump, 42, lived in a condominium in Washington’s Mount Vernon Triangle neighborhood. He grew up in Clear Lake, Iowa, and told Goenka that he had his sights set on politics ever since his junior year of high school, when he worked as a page for the House of Representatives.
He earned a bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of Iowa in Iowa City and a master’s degree in political science from the University of Washington in Seattle.
The pair ended the evening with plans to see each other again and met a week later at L’Ardente, an Italian restaurant in Pump’s neighborhood.
Both said the night was “incredibly romantic.” They shared grilled shrimp, focaccia and peach gelato and held hands across the table as they delved deeper into their personal lives.
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By the fourth date, in August, they were having what Goenka described as “the big conversation.” “We were talking moving in and marriage and discovered we were completely aligned on all of it,” he said.
“I’d never been in a relationship where things aligned so well, so consistently,” Pump said. “We started to sketch out our lives together and created a shared Google calendar.”
Over Thanksgiving weekend that year, the couple took a trip to New York, where they visited the Cartier store on Fifth Avenue and chose their wedding bands.
Back in Washington, they settled into a rhythm. They were united by their love of cooking, visiting farmers’ markets and what Goenka described as a “devotion” to Ben & Jerry’s Milk & Cookies ice cream. Goenka introduced Pump to hatha yoga and pranayama meditation, while he got him hooked on political gossip.
In June 2025, just as the couple was preparing to move in together into their current apartment in downtown Washington, Pump was diagnosed with Stage 2 colon cancer. He has been cancer-free since his surgery that July to have a tumor in his colon removed. “There was so much uncertainty in my life,” Pump said, “but Shreyans’s care-taking and calmness got me through.”
The two preplanned when each would propose. Pump asked Goenka in October 2025 over dinner at L’Ardente, while Goenka’s proposal came on another Thanksgiving weekend trip to New York.
The couple was wed June 18 before 28 guests on the steps of the U.S. Capitol. Representative Bennie Thompson, a Democrat from Mississippi, officiated after being temporarily ordained by the District of Columbia’s Marriage Bureau.
In a nod to his Indian background, Goenka wore a traditional jodhpuri suit with a mandarin-style collar. And the ceremony incorporated the jaimala, or the exchanging of garlands, symbolizing their union.
The couple celebrated with family and friends that afternoon at Joe’s Seafood, Prime Steak & Stone Crab in downtown Washington.
On June 20, they hosted a reception for 150 guests on the rooftop of the Riggs Washington DC hotel. The evening featured a Bollywood dance troupe, and midway through the performance, Pump joined in, surprising Goenka with a sequence that he had spent several months rehearsing with the group.