Arden Myrin and Dan Martin

WAITSFIELD, VT., DEC. 30 The bride, a comedian, takes advantage of a captive audience.

By MARIALISA CALTA
Published: January 6, 2008

DAN MARTIN realized he was deeply in love when his girlfriend, Arden Myrin, began dancing wildly to piped-in music in the frozen food aisle of a Hollywood supermarket.

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Dennis Curran for The New York Times
The first dance.
“I watched her reaching for the green peas and rocking out,” he said. “And I thought, ‘This is it. I could spend my life with her.’”

They met in early 2001 at a Los Angeles comedy club; Ms. Myrin was doing stand-up and Mr. Martin, a comedy writer, was in the audience. On the surface, at least, they had a lot in common. Both were raised on the East Coast — he in Northport, on Long Island, and she in Little Compton, R.I. — and both had moved to Los Angeles for their careers.

Both had staved off homesickness by listening to Howard Stern’s radio program. On their first date, in fact, Mr. Martin raved about an “amazingly funny” and engaging woman he had heard on Stern, but whose name he had forgotten. “Arden looked at me and said, ‘That was me!’” he recalled. “I was stunned.”

It took a while to get to that first date, however. Mr. Martin, now 36 and a writer for “Code Monkeys,” an animated series on the G4 cable television network, remembered being impressed by Ms. Myrin, a diminutive blonde. But he just assumed that she was dating someone. When he found out otherwise, he returned to the club every week for a month before marshaling the courage to ask her out.

Ms. Myrin, now 34, has always been focused on a stage career. “I never had a Plan B,” she said. After graduating from Colorado College, she dared herself to do stand-up at a comedy club in New York. Soon she had an agent and a small role in Woody Allen’s “Deconstructing Harry.” Other movie roles (“What Women Want,” 2000; “Kinsey,” 2004; “Evan Almighty,” 2007) led her to Hollywood, where two years ago she landed a job as a cast member of “MadTV,” a show now in reruns because of the Writers Guild strike.

Mr. Martin is “Arden in reverse” according to Ryan Hunter, his roommate at the University of Arizona. “Arden’s zaniness is on the outside, her caring and sweetness within. Dan is in some ways the opposite.” Mr. Hunter described his friend as “courageous and adventurous” and “deep down, mad as a hatter.”

Mr. Martin’s circuitous path to Los Angeles included dropping out of high school, joining the Air Force, marrying briefly, divorcing. He used his military benefits to study creative writing at Arizona, but quit, he said, when he decided that “I wanted to write scripts, not short stories.” He bounced around Los Angeles, making his living as a dog-walker and a hotel concierge before finally earning a paycheck from his writing.

When he and Ms. Myrin met, he was not looking for marriage, he said, “but, in my heart, I always thought that life would be sort of sad if you were not sharing it with someone.”

As for Ms. Myrin, she spent their first few dates wondering what was wrong with Mr. Martin. “He was so tall and handsome and he looked like every guy that had ever treated me badly,” she said. “I figured he was hiding something.” It took her “months to trust that he was as nice and sweet as he seemed,” she said.

As their relationship deepened, Mr. Martin was increasingly drawn to what he describes as her fearlessness, selflessness and goofiness. He explained: “With Arden you never know what you are going to get.” He recalled finding her one afternoon “peacefully napping in bed after a long battle with insomnia, dressed to go jogging and clutching a spatula.”

“I will never be bored,” he added.

For her part, Ms. Myrin saw in him a man secure enough to remain unthreatened by her work. On “MadTV,” she said, “mostly I just run around in my underwear and act like a ding-dong. It takes a confident guy to deal with a woman who is so out there.”

“A lot of men are competitive about being funny,” she said. “but not Dan.”

She did not think of marriage as a priority, but, “I began to think it would actually happen.” She thought that Mr. Martin was waiting until “he had his ducks in order.” And, after selling a script, he surprised her with a trip in November 2006 to Dublin, where he proposed.

The day, he recalled, was miserable and rainy, perfect for a couple that prefers “real weather” to the steady sunshine of Los Angeles.

The weather could not have been more real than on the frosty, windy afternoon of Dec. 30, when Mr. Martin and Ms. Myrin were married at Round Barn Farm, an inn at Waitsfield, Vt. Just minutes before the ceremony was to begin, the bride could be found with her mother, Janet, and her attendants, dancing wildly to rock music in the reception area.

“You are the most” — Mr. Martin said, pausing when reading his vows — “ridiculous human being I have ever met. And I am in love with you.” Ms. Myrin responded that he was her “Rock of Dan-braltar.”

The ceremony, witnessed by about 140 family members and friends, was led by their friend Steve Hytner, a comedian who became a Universal Life minister for the occasion. The wedding party included a male bridesmaid, and the singer Clare Muldaur finished a mellow Nina Simone number with a kazoo solo.

Then came the first dance, an elaborately choreographed disco number. As the couple dipped and spun, they looked at once both spontaneous and wild, and perfectly in sync.

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