Some love stories sound too perfectly constructed to be real. Coleman Domingo's is one of them. The award-winning actor shared the full, almost implausible account of how he met his now-husband of ten years on Kelly Ripa's podcast Let's Talk Off Camera — a story that winds from a chance sidewalk glance in Berkeley to a Craigslist missed connection posted just one hour before Domingo stumbled upon it.
A Stranger Outside a Walgreens
It began on a Sunday night in Berkeley, California, where Domingo was living temporarily while performing at Berkeley Repertory Theatre. On a routine trip to Walgreens to pick up a face mask, he walked out the door and stopped cold.
"Walking out of Walgreens was this beautiful, beautiful man with hair down past his shoulders and a lip piercing," Domingo recalled. "He had the greenest eyes. He just looked like something out of a fairy tale."
The two locked eyes immediately. But the man was with a companion who appeared impatient, and by the time Domingo finished a phone call and turned back around, the pair had disappeared down Shattuck Avenue — the man glancing back the entire way. Domingo raised his hand and called out for him to come back. He didn't.
Rather than let it go, Domingo did something that revealed a deeply romantic streak. He decided that if the stranger had felt the same pull, maybe he would return to that same spot the following Sunday at 8 p.m. He filed the thought away and tried to move on.
The Craigslist Post That Changed Everything
Three days later, Domingo was browsing Craigslist in search of a used computer — he had received a writing grant and needed the equipment. After an hour of searching, he found himself idly reading the site's "Missed Connections" section, a now-nostalgic corner of early internet culture where strangers posted notes to people they'd briefly encountered and hoped to find again.
"I thought, well, what if I wrote one of those?" he said. Then, on the second page, third post from the top, he saw the headline: "Saw you outside of Walgreens, Berkeley."
"I literally jumped up," Domingo said. "I clicked on it — I was almost scared to click it." The post described him precisely, including his fauxhawk hairstyle, and ended with a simple, hopeful note: "I'm sorry we were lost and my friend was rushing off. I hope this finds you."
The post had gone live just one hour earlier. The man had apparently tried to submit it three times before it finally appeared.
The First Date, and Four Words Spoken at 4 a.m.
The two connected by email and agreed to meet two days later at a bar called Dalva in San Francisco. The night went beautifully. When it came time to part ways, Domingo — trying, as he put it, to "practice some good behavior" — agreed to go home with his date on one condition: they would just cuddle.
Lying awake at 4 in the morning, believing his companion was asleep, Domingo spoke quietly into the dark.
"I think I love you, and you're about to change my life."
His date heard every word. He said nothing in return. They have been together ever since.
A Coda: They Were Almost Meant to Meet Two Years Earlier
As if the story needed any further embellishment, Domingo and his husband later discovered a remarkable near-miss. Comparing notes about their lives before that night outside Walgreens, they realized they had almost certainly crossed paths years before — both working in the same building on Geary Street in San Francisco. Domingo's agent had an office on the sixth floor. His future husband had worked as a tailor for Gucci on the fifth.
At some point, both men remembered a single shared moment in that building — a moment neither could fully place until they compared their histories side by side.
Domingo and his husband celebrated their tenth wedding anniversary around the time this conversation was recorded, with nearly twenty years together in total. The full episode, including what that near-miss memory turned out to be, is available on Let's Talk Off Camera with Kelly Ripa.
