Before they were @RayandJanny, the TikTok-famous couple with 555,000 followers, they were Raymond Zhao and Janet Kim, students at Great Neck South High School on Long Island. In 2012, Ray, a senior, and Janny, a sophomore, bonded in fashion marketing class. They remained friends for years, going on dates-that-weren’t-technically-dates to New York’s Museum of Modern Art and chocolatier Max Brenner. But after shopping and dinner on Christmas Eve 2020, Ray confessed to Janny that he wanted to start dating—for real.
“I knew it wasn’t going to be easy, not only because she had friend-zoned me for almost a decade, but also because she was moving to Korea indefinitely,” he says. Janny, who is Korean but had never lived there, was bound for adventure in Seoul. Feelings bubbled for Ray, but “I needed my Eat, Pray, Love moment,” she says.
Still, when the pandemic hit, Ray jetted across the world to visit. After a 14-day quarantine at a government-mandated hotel, the (masked) pair wandered the charming Ikseon-dong Hanok Street (an essential “dates village,” Janny said, filled with dessert cafes and boutique beer) and hopped to Jeju Island (“the Bahamas of Korea,” per Ray.) The trip was a turning point for Janny, who realized, “Hey, I really like him.” In 2022, she moved back to New York.
Last May, Ray proposed on Aruba’s Manchebo Beach, under the guise of an influencer collaboration with a local photographer. After posing for solo shots, Janny “turned around to see Ray down on one knee.”
In the early days of dating long-distance from Seoul, @RayandJanny was born. “When I missed him, I would make little videos of our dates in Korea and post it on TikTok,” she recalls. They started out just “for us,” but the clips went viral as they captured Korea’s “couple culture,” including women receiving what Janny calls “the princess treatment” and chivalry being very much alive. “Men tend to be gentlemen, like opening doors, making sure her head is covered when she’s going into the car,” Ray explains. Typical TikToks feature Ray delivering Janny iced blueberry lattes in bed or escorting her home from the office (the couple works in finance).
For a September wedding as traditionally romantic as their content, Ray and Janny chose Oheka Castle, a French chateau-inspired estate in Huntington, New York. “It felt enchanting that we could have a European-style wedding right in our hometown,” the bride says. In contrast to their vast TikTok audience, they limited their guest list to under 100, Janny said, “to keep it super genuine.”
