Emily Carlin’s hands gripped her red Jeep’s steering wheel as she struggled to navigate the maze of barricades that had sprung up overnight around the Capitol. The then-congressional press secretary was trying to get back to work, but strict security measures in the week following Jan. 6, 2021, made her return seem futile.

As she entered the same entry-control point for the third or fourth time, a burly National Guard soldier gave her new directions. His face was masked, but Carlin couldn’t help noticing his demeanor was a little more amiable than those of others who’d tried to help her.

The chance encounter was just the beginning of a love story that could only unfold in Washington.

Last month, the pair tied the knot at Carlin’s family home in Michigan. The engagement and wedding announcements were even included in the bible of the Beltway, Politico’s Playbook.

“God puts people where they need to be,” Carlin said of the encounter and the serendipitous Tinder match that came next.

Her future groom, Matthew Ellis, was a Maryland National Guard soldier living in West Virginia at the time. On Jan. 6, he was preparing for a day of work as an electric meter reader when his phone buzzed with word that his Guard unit might be preparing for an emergency deployment to D.C. He thought little of the rumor at first, assuming the violence would be quelled quickly by local authorities.

“I wake up the next morning and my team leader’s calling me, telling me I need to get to the armory right now,” Ellis told The Washington Post. He arrived at the Capitol later that day, Jan. 7, and got to work beefing up security, erecting heavy-duty fencing, and then helping to control the trickle of approved traffic once lawmakers and staffers began returning to work days later.

Carlin was one of those staffers returning to work the next week. She couldn’t determine how to exit the highway from her home in Alexandria, Va., and arrive at her usual House side, getting stuck instead around the Senate. Barriers shifted frequently, further complicating commutes that kept funneling her too far north.

“It took me hours to figure out how to get across the bridge and into D.C.,” Carlin said.

After circling Union Station one morning around Jan. 14, Carlin pulled up in her car to the same National Guard checkpoint yet again.

Despite the stress, she couldn’t help wondering about some of the clean-cut Guard members surrounding her. “I was single, and some of them were there waving and saying hi,” she said. But it was hard to tell if she’d seen them before since they all wore masks.

Alone in her car, Carlin was maskless while navigating the checkpoints. She couldn’t see the soldier’s faces, let alone remember them.

But one remembered hers.

Intrigued by the dozens of soldiers she passed, Carlin opened up Tinder that evening and the next to see what she might find. She quickly matched with a dark-haired soldier with thick brows and a warm smile. He was in town temporarily, he said, posted to the northeast of the Capitol building for security duties.

“I was just over there today,” Carlin recalled telling her new Tinder match. “I keep not being able to find my way to work, so I probably passed you about five times today.”

From there, “everything just started clicking,” Ellis told The Post. He thought to himself, “Wait a second, I’ve seen the face somewhere,” he said.

“Oh my god,” he messaged her. “Were you the blonde in the red Jeep Compass?” A longtime Jeep owner and devotee, Ellis recognized Carlin’s as a newer model. He also had a good sense of direction from studying atlases on family road trips.

The pair marveled at the strangeness of their encounter at the Capitol and then again soon after on Tinder.

Their first date had to wait until Ellis’s orders and subsequent quarantine period ended the first week of February. The day his quarantine ended, he drove two hours from his home in West Virginia to take her out. In keeping with their nontraditional meet-cute, the date would be unusual too — a visit to a shooting range. Carlin wasn’t a newbie to guns, but she wasn’t an expert either.

“I was a little spooked post-January 6, and I wanted to be able to defend myself,” Carlin explained. Ellis told her he was a good shot, so, “I figured if I got nothing else out of this date, at least he would teach me how to shoot,” she said.

Ellis, who prefers the calm countryside to D.C.’s hustle and bustle, attracted Carlin with his quiet confidence and unflappable nature.

He found her laughter and bubbly spirit charming.

An 85-mile dating commute was on the horizon for the pair, but pandemic-era fate intervened again.

Ellis received orders for a second National Guard mission not long after returning from the Capitol — this time, helping to roll out coronavirus vaccines. He was just 30 minutes away from Carlin for five months.

Despite the initial hurdles of distance and pandemic deployments, “they definitely both came into it with an open mind,” said maid of honor and longtime friend Robin Eberhardt.

“Life put them in a situation that you wouldn’t expect,” Eberhardt said. “But they really got along, and now they’re really happy together.”

The pair became engaged in 2023. Before popping the question, Ellis hid the engagement ring in his Army boots, correctly deciding they were too odoriferous for Carlin to stumble upon the jewel.

Priest Alyse Viggiano — herself well acquainted with D.C. romance — officiated the wedding ceremony. Ellis saw Viggiano regularly for Episcopalian confirmation classes, culminating in his baptism, an important step for the couple.

“It’s incredible to want to understand somebody’s spiritual life and religion to that capacity,” Viggiano said. “That you’re willing to give up a lot of your time to understand a person’s faith.”

Unfortunately, Ellis’s wedding ring didn’t survive the honeymoon in Greece, slipping off his finger while swimming in the ocean. But the couple said they consider the loss an unintentional marital offering to the Greek goddess of love, Aphrodite.

“Happy spots come when you’re not looking for them,” Carlin said.