She’s the 21-year-old daughter of immigrant supermarket mogul John Catsimatidis and an NYU student with a penchant for bold fashions.
He’s the unassuming 32-year-old grandson of Richard Nixon and a Quaker whose ancestry can be traced back to the Mayflower.
And on Saturday, Andrea Catsimatidis and Christopher Nixon Cox will walk down the aisle of the Greek Orthodox Cathedral of the Holy Trinity, in a ceremony to be followed by a lavish reception at the Waldorf-Astoria, where Hillary Rodham Clinton and Henry Kissinger are among the 700 expected guests.
It may seem like an unlikely love match, but Cox sums up the attraction well: “I’m Ian Miller,” he smiles, referring to the WASP-y love interest played by John Corbett in “My Big Fat Greek Wedding.”
And though the young couple share political ambitions — Cox ran for Congress last year but lost the Republican primary, while Catsimatidis says she would like to run for office one day — they say it’s their passion for cooking that has helped to bring them together.
“When Christopher and I started dating, he gained 20 pounds!” laughs the bride-to-be, who has one more semester to go at NYU.
Their first date wrapped up at Blue Ribbon Bakery in Greenwich Village, where they capped off dinner with chocolate chip bread pudding.
“I didn’t know we were on a date until we shared dessert,” recalls Catsimatidis, who later whipped up the confection for her paramour using a recipe from Paula Deen.
“It was much better,” says Cox.
Next came pineapple upside-down cake. “They say the best way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. I got the man, so it must have worked!” she says.
The couple initially met at a mock presidential debate at Catsimatidis’ all-girl high school, Hewitt, in 2008. But they say that romance didn’t bloom until about six months later, when, as a college freshman, Catsimatidis got involved in John McCain’s presidential campaign, where Cox worked. Their second date was at Hofstra University — for the final presidential debate of the 2008 election. And last year, Cox popped the question after the couple dined at Le Cirque.
With the wedding just around the corner, the couple are looking relaxed and very much in love, holding hands in the Catsimatidis’ Fifth Avenue home, where Valentine, Andrea’s cockatiel, kisses and whistles at the sight of them. “He loves Chris, and he’s a good judge of character,” she says, before offering a quick tour of a hallway lined floor-to-ceiling with family photos. The gallery is a testament to her family’s political clout, with everyone from Cheney and Obama to Castro and Gorbachev caught in the lens. There are whimsical touches, too: A wax butler carrying a tray of Hershey’s Kisses greets visitors in the foyer (on more than one occasion, guests have greeted the butler, thinking he was real).
But the real action is going on in the kitchen, where the couple have cooked up favorite dishes reflecting their family traditions — all-American macaroni and cheese and the Greek spinach pie known as spanakopita. The couple frequently makes spanakopita for “Greek Night” at the home of Cox’s parents, Tricia Nixon Cox and New York State GOP chairman Edward Cox. And yes, they all watched “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” together.
Throughout the years, food and politics have remained a constant in their courtship. When Cox was campaigning, his fiancée baked elephant cookies with red, white and blue sprinkles to hand out to voters. “Food was the way people would stop and actually listen to what I had to say about Chris. Through food they came to know what kind of person [he is].”
“People still talk about it,” adds Cox. “They won’t talk about me. They’ll say, ‘I met Andrea at the Smithtown fair!’ ”