On May 3, 2018, Caitlin Joy Bailey was wrapping up a work event with her friend, the actress and entrepreneur Shay Mitchell, in uptown Manhattan, when they discussed where to have dinner.
Mitchell suggested Carbone, a popular Italian restaurant in Greenwich Village. Bailey laughed, certain that a last-minute table would be impossible. But Mitchell had texted a friend she knew who worked there, so when they arrived, the hostess told them their “party” was waiting in the back room, which confused Bailey.
Unbeknown to her, the friend happened to be Mario Jude Carbone Jr., an owner of Carbone, who was celebrating his friend’s birthday and invited Mitchell and Bailey to join his table. Although neither Bailey nor Carbone was looking to date anyone, they connected immediately, talking and laughing for hours.
Days later, Bailey went to Nashville to celebrate her 29th birthday and received an unexpected call while she was there. It was Carbone, who wished her a happy birthday, having saved the date in his phone the night they met. He also wanted to help throw her a party in New York once she was back. Within 24 hours, they had organized her birthday party at Dirty French, his restaurant at the Ludlow Hotel. “The entire night I sat in a corner with Mario and talked,” Bailey said.
On June 13, 2018, Carbone invited Bailey to ZZ’s Clam Bar, now the Clam Bar, in Greenwich Village. Thinking it was casual, she brought her best friend, only to find the restaurant closed to the public and lit by candlelight. “I guess I was a little too coy in how I invited her,” Carbone said.
Their first official date was on July 13, 2018, when Bailey invited Carbone to be her date at a friend’s wedding in Maryland. There, she introduced him to a traditional crab feast. “I’ve got butcher paper of steamed crabs and a hammer in front of me, with a suit on,” Carbone recalled. “Even though I’m a chef, I never ate crab like this before.”
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“He picked tiny crab meat with me for hours, and we thought it was the most hilarious thing,” Bailey said. That weekend, he met her entire family for the first time.
Bailey, 37, is an independent brand strategist based in Miami and New York, with a team in Los Angeles. She grew up in Baltimore and received a bachelor’s degree in communications from Georgia Southern University.
Carbone, 46, is a managing partner at Major Food Group, a global restaurant and hospitality company. He grew up in Queens and earned a bachelor’s degree in culinary arts from the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, N.Y.
In 2020, when the coronavirus pandemic virtually shut down the restaurant industry, his company decided that the best path forward was to establish a base in Miami. Carbone, a lifelong New Yorker, would be relocating for the first time and knew it would be a big ask for Bailey.
“‘We’re going — I’ll pack us up now,’” Bailey recalled telling him. “That’s just what we do as the partner to someone that we love and support. It didn’t make a difference where I was, as long as I was with him.”
By Nov. 30, 2020, they had moved to Miami. They now live with their dog, Rocco, in Miami Beach.
On July 14, 2024, on their annual trip to Italy, Carbone proposed to Bailey with a pear-shaped diamond ring at their cliffside house rental in Capri.
This month, on Aug. 14, the deputy clerk Jean St. Fleur officiated their civil legal ceremony at the Joseph Caleb Center in Miami.
They held their wedding celebration at Santa Maria dello Spasimo in Palermo, Sicily, on Aug. 1 before 120 guests. Bailey walked down the aisle with her father, David Bailey, to Christian music played by a string quartet.
Pastor Rich Wilkerson Jr. of Vous Church in Miami led the ceremony, and Filippo Testa, a friend of the couple’s, gave an Italian blessing. Afterward, guests were driven to Villa Valguarnera in Bagheria for a Sicilian reception. There, Carbone surprised guests with spicy rigatoni prepared by one of his chefs. “I put an apron on and served it to everyone,” he said.
A live band accompanied the family dances, and then the guests did the tarantella, a traditional Italian group dance that led them through the dessert room. Anderson .Paak, the songwriter, rapper and drummer, performed as D.J. Pee .Wee, followed by the Italian music duo Mind Enterprises and Tucker Halpern of the music duo Sofi Tukker, who played until sunrise.
“We’ve lived so many years together as a couple, eight years now,” Carbone said. “To have this weekend with all of our closest people there, celebrating us, felt like the first chapter of a new book we’re going to embark on.”
In the fall, they will host a larger reception at the Seagram Building in Midtown Manhattan.
