Bride met soul mate - who happened to be a transgender man East Coast transplant met her soul mate - who happened to be a transgender man

Kyra Byrne and Sawyer Steele, both 32, married at Sova Gardens in Sebastopol on Friday, Aug. 23, with a weekend on the Russian River that included swimming and a barbecue. Kyra Byrne and Sawyer Steele, both 32, married at Sova Gardens in Sebastopol on Friday, Aug. 23, with a weekend on the Russian River that included swimming and a barbecue. Photo: Kristina Hill, Www.kristinahill.com Photo: Kristina Hill, Www.kristinahill.com Image 1 of / 9 Caption Close Bride met soul mate - who happened to be a transgender man 1 / 9 Back to Gallery

It was June of 2010 and Kyra Byrne attended her first San Francisco Pride celebration. The workers' rights advocate had moved from the East Coast the previous year, and the last thing on her mind was a relationship.

At a Michael Jackson dance party that broke out spontaneously in the Mission, a random man grabbed her hand.

"There's the cutest guy over there, come meet him with me," he said. Kyra reluctantly played wingman, and shared an awkward moment with these two strangers. She then fled back to her friends.

It could have ended there. But as soon as "the cutest guy" laid eyes on Kyra, he was done.

"I have a feeling about that girl," Sawyer Steele told his friends. In his words, "I instantly became obsessed with her."

Soon, Kyra and Sawyer were talking, and then dancing together. Kyra noticed Sawyer's "Trans March" button from earlier in the day.

"I'm trans!" he blurted out.

"I had no idea," Kyra said later. "I had thought he was an adorable gay boy."

Kyra would soon realize she wasn't alone in her thinking. Although the pair pass as a straight couple, "it's also confusing for people when they assume I'm a gay man," said Sawyer, "with them thinking Kyra doesn't realize it." (While they are out to most everyone, they were sure this article would be a revelation to some who know them only casually.)

Sawyer - a filmmaker, writer and producer who works with Bay Area filmmaker Tiffany Shlain at the studio she founded, the Moxie Institute - came out as transgender at age 21. Long part of the queer community, he had no interest in marriage, seeing it as a hetero-normative institution that he was excluded from, as were many of his friends.

Kyra, an organizer for one of the Bay Area's public employee unions, was a self-described cynical Jersey girl who also had a distrust of marriage for political reasons and because of her parents' divorce. And when she met Sawyer, she didn't even think she wanted a relationship. So she was surprised at her own behavior when she called him the next day.

Their East Coast sensibility, common age and cultural reference points were an easy match.

"If we hadn't had an attraction, we would have instantly been best friends," said Sawyer, originally from Massachusetts.

"I have mellowed out from my tough exterior and softened and let love in and just embraced peace in a way I didn't know was possible," said Kyra, a sentiment later seconded by her brother in his toast.

Sawyer said, "I have become a hundred times more me. I'm celebrated every day by Kyra for every quirk. I can be exactly who I am in a way I never knew before."

Sawyer told his parents he had met "the one" two weeks after meeting her. Kyra was a bit more hesitant. Her brother barely reacted to the news of her new love being trans. Her mother went from saying, "That's weird" to "That's cool" in a matter of minutes. Now she has become more vocal about her support of LGBT rights.

The couple moved in together in Oakland a year after they met, and Sawyer proposed in December 2012 at sunset on a Mendocino beach. A woman jogging by in Crocs and wool socks will forever remain part of their special moment.

The couple, both 32, married at Sova Gardens in Sebastopol on Aug. 23, with a weekend on the Russian River that included swimming and a barbecue. Lili Goodman-Freitas, a nondenominational minister, officiated, telling them: "May the fact that you met dancing in the streets continue to guide your path."

The couple exchanged rings they had made themselves.

Two months before the wedding, the Supreme Court decision changed the course of same-sex marriage in California. "We got to live in the middle of this crazy zeitgeist," Sawyer said. "The struggle over should I participate or not was gone all of a sudden."

For the couple, said Kyra, marriage is "a celebration, not this stuffy institution."

The irony of Sawyer's legally becoming a man a month before the wedding was also not lost on him.

"I went through all the paperwork so that we would be married as man and woman, a funny loophole," he said, "and then all of a sudden everyone could marry, and we were able to participate in a summer that will forever be part of LGBT history."