By Tammy La Gorce for The New York Times
Until he met Princess Francois, Andy Estevez felt like the king of lonely hearts. “Put it this way: I was a dork, dork, dork,” he said. “I was completely focused on being the best student when I was growing up and then completely focused on being the best professional as an adult.”
The love life of Ms. Francois was stalled, too, in part by her own high standards. “I don’t mean to sound prideful,” she said. “But I was like, ‘How can I meet someone of equal caliber to me?’” Both are Brooklyn educators. And both had resigned themselves to romantic disappointment when they met on the dating app Coffee Meets Bagel in January 2017.
Ms. Francois, 32, an assistant principal of instruction at MESA Charter High School in Bushwick, is a royal just in name. She grew up in Flatbush with her mother, Marie Marcella Francois, a retired health care worker who immigrated from Haiti in the 1970s.
At Columbia University, Ms. Francois was in a pre-med program, but when she graduated in 2011 and worked for Teach for America, she let go of the idea of becoming a doctor. Placed in the Flatbush community where she grew up, “I felt powerful,” she said. “I liked being that role model for success in my own community. Continue reading