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Beautiful Ballet Couples: Megan Fairchild and Andrew Veyette (Principals with NYCB)
Married on July 24th, 2011.

Even in ballet, opposites attract. New York City Ballet’s Megan Fairchild and Andrew Veyette are about as different as can be. She’s shy; he’s outgoing. She’s careful; he’s a showoff. She’s a good girl from Salt Lake City; he’s a California rebel.

“This sounds super cheesy,” Ms. Fairchild, “but from the moment we started dating, we never spent time apart, and we’ve always known eventually one day we’d get married. But we were so young, we had to wait.”       

Until one day… “Andy tossed me a little white box … I thought it was earrings or something, and then opened it to find the ring! I actually screamed ‘No!’ because I couldn’t believe it, but then I said yes.”

As soon as Ms. Fairchild joined the City Ballet, Andrew Veyette noticed her pixielike spirit and started flirting with her. “The whole first year I was in the company he tried to get my attention,” Ms. Fairchild, 27, recalled. “I thought it was a hazing kind of thing.” She was often backstage while he danced. “He’d look back at me and say, ‘What are you looking at?’ That went on for a long time.”

She liked his attention but didn’t like what people said about him. Ms. Lowery said: “He had this reputation for being a bad boy, and she was tentative because Megan always does the right thing. She got straight A’s, she was at the top of her ballet class.” Ms. Lowery added, “Andrew’s got the biggest heart, but he didn’t want anybody to know it.”

Mr. Veyette was also persistent, and Ms. Fairchild was interested enough to join him for drinks. At that time, Mr. Veyette was known in the company for going out a lot. “He was that cool smoker and drinker, that cool guy you think you can’t have a chance with,” Ms. Lowery said. “But Megan caught his eye.”

But their relationship probably saved his career. Veyette was having a rough year: He was skipping the daily dance class, and the company threatened to let him go. Once they started dating, he began shedding his bad-boy reputation. He went to ballet classes regularly, as she does. He got out of debt, he said, and gradually lost interest in partying.

Asked why she began studying ballet, Ms. Fairchild said that she liked the “control and discipline,” adding: “Now, it just feels so good to stretch my leg out or point my foot. It feels good to my body. It feels like home.” When asked the same question, Mr. Veyette replied, “You look at the male-to-female ratio and you think, This is a lot more fun than soccer!”

Veyette said they dilute the intensity of their jobs through humor. “Megan is really beautiful and smart and funny,” he said. “We spend a lot of our lives laughing.”

On July 24 they were married in the backyard of Crabtree’s Kittle House. Some bridegrooms avoid eye contact with their brides, and vice versa, but Ms. Fairchild and Mr. Veyette, who wore a tight-fitting gray suit, stared at each other throughout the ceremony. “He just adores her, and she’s worth adoring,”

Watch Megan and Andrew Dance Together