On Good Footing After a Polo Tournament

Even before Dr. Orion Paul Mercaitis saw Olivia Louise Stringer, he heard her trying to get a fractious horse to settle down in October 2023 in the back of a trailer at New Haven Farm in Aiken, S.C.

“I don’t have a string of polo ponies, so I had to lease one,” said Dr. Mercaitis, 35, who lives in Guilderland, N.Y., outside Albany, and is a senior manager in the United States market access division for oncology drugs at Pfizer, the pharmaceutical company.

When he landed that job, Mr. Mercaitis couldn’t think of a better way to celebrate than playing in a three-day polo tournament a couple of weeks later in Aiken, alongside Adam Snow, a polo champion and an owner of New Haven Farm.

“Get on the horse,” said Ms. Stringer, when she brought out a thoroughbred named Flash, one of three ponies for him to try that day. “I’m pretty direct,” she added. “He definitely laughed.”

Ms. Stringer, 40, a professional women’s polo player, owns Liv Polo, which provides rentals, sales, training and coaching in Aiken and the Northeast. She started playing polo at 13, representing United States in matches in international women’s polo in India in 2018 and Australia in 2022.

“We were pretty surprised to see each other,” said Ms. Stringer, who graduated with bachelor’s degrees in equine science and English from Colorado State University, and whose clients are usually adult amateurs, 50-plus. “He assumed I was older as well. He was a young, attractive person.”

Dr. Mercaitis, who graduated with high distinction with a bachelor’s degree in biology from the University of California, Berkeley, fell in love with polo in his 20s while studying at Oxford, where he received a master’s degree in musculoskeletal sciences in 2020. He also has a medical degree from the University of Miami, and a Master of Public Health in epidemiology from Harvard.

“This is the kind of guy I should consider dating when the time comes,” Ms. Stringer recalled thinking. Her previous marriage ended in divorce earlier that year, and she was not yet dating.

After Dr. Mercaitis left Aiken, they sent each other texts about polo, shared photos of their dogs, and she sent him a few images of his favorite ponies.

“We were both being professional,” said Dr. Mercaitis, who thought “she was so perfect and unfathomable.” He figured he didn’t “have a chance.”

As New Year’s Eve approached and Ms. Stringer asked him if he had any plans, it seemed like an opening to him. He asked if she would like to celebrate at Wildflower Farms, a new Catskills resort in Gardiner, N.Y.

On Dec. 30 — after she visited family in Florida, then flew up to Albany — he drove them down to the Catskills.

“I had my Jack Russell, Comet, very much my sidekick,” Ms. Stringer said, and he brought his golden retriever Sirius (he named his polo team after him).

Both dogs got along, and so did they.

“We started talking and never stopped,” she said. “It was a three-day first date,” with farm-to-table meals, soaks in hot tubs and hikes with their dogs.

After dinner on New Year’s Eve, they had a first kiss, and as the band later played “Auld Lang Syne,” they began the year with another kiss and Champagne.

Before Ms. Stringer returned home, he gave her a tour of his hometown, the Albany area. He took her for flying lessons in Saratoga, N.Y., where she then flew a helicopter around the New York State Capitol. They landed in an Albany airfield, and then she took a Cirrus SR20 plane for a spin around the capitol. He is finishing up a pilot’s license in both.

Later in January 2024, she joined him for Robert Burns Night, an annual celebration of the Scottish bard, on the Royal Yacht Britannia in Edinburgh. He donned a kilt with his Oxford College tartan and she a matching sash as they enjoyed haggis and poetry readings.

In March, he drove to Aiken to celebrate her birthday, but the night before Easter he received shocking news. His father had died. Ms. Stringer stood by him during the next difficult weeks, and traveled to Albany to be with him.

“I didn’t know they made women like this,” he said, and then he stayed in Aiken until the end of May.

Over the summer, they spent time with her family in Baltimore, and her parents then joined them on a trip to Provincetown, Mass., in Cape Cod in late August.

During that trip, as the two walked along a quiet stretch of beach at Race Point, he pretended to see a dolphin to distract her. After she looked for it, and turned back around, he was on one knee.

On March 1, the Rev. Canon Calhoun Walpole, the rector of St. John’s Episcopal Church in Johns Island, S.C., officiated before 72 guests, at least 30 were polo players, at Grace Chapel on Wadmalaw Island, S.C., where the bride walked down the aisle to a trumpet player and pianist playing Pachelbel’s “Canon in D.”

Later, at the Charleston Yacht Club, where two polo mallets with their initials appeared on cocktail napkins and other items, they enjoyed a Southern menu including shrimp and grits, barbecued pulled pork and brisket.

During the following week, on March 5, her birthday, their offer was accepted on a dream farm in Aiken — a 30-acre, 27-stall barn with a polo field, and plan to call it Outfoxed Farms.

“Olivia is bright and witty, and always a step ahead of me,” he said, with a laugh.