“Annie Hall.” “Sleepless in Seattle.” “When Harry Met Sally . . . ” If romantic comedies have taught us anything, it’s that New York is a great place to meet the love of your life — in the most adorably awkward, serendipitous way imaginable. But c’mon, no one ever really falls in love while sharing a cab with a stranger or on the subway, right?
Just in time for Valentine’s Day, The Post rounded up six local couples who prove that you can find true love, rom-com-style, in New York.
Kimberly and David Smith
Met at Chipotle, April 2008
With its snaking lines and smell of beans, Chipotle is hardly the most romantic spot in town. But David Smith saw something at the Penn Station location that caught his eye.
“I sat across the room so I could see her,” David Smith, 36, says of Kimberly Porter.
He used the excuse of grabbing some napkins to walk by Kimberly and say hi. “[She] looked at me like, ‘Who is this weirdo?’ ” the banker recalls.
“I thought he was a creep,” Kimberly, 30, laughs.
A few minutes later, David decided to get some more napkins — and ask to sit with the beautiful woman. “I denied him,” Kimberly explains.
Undaunted, he came back one last time. “I said, ‘I think you’re very attractive, do you mind if I give you a call?’ ”
I never thought I would meet someone at Chipotle.
- Kimberly Smith
Kimberly refused, but “I took his number,” she says. “He was attractive.”
Much to David’s surprise, Kimberly, who works in insurance, texted a few days later.
“I was like, ‘Kim who?’ ” he says. “She didn’t take too kindly to that.”
It took two months for her to actually go out with him, but he finally got it right by surprising her with tickets to see Alicia Keys. The Long Island couple married two years later, and their daughter is about to turn 4.
“I used to go out three times a week and never meet anyone,” Kimberly says. “I never thought I would meet someone at Chipotle.”
Alina Adams and Scott W.
Met at the Arch, June 1997
Finding love at one of the city’s most iconic landmarks is the kind of thing you see in Nora Ephron movies. But it actually happened to Alina Adams and Scott W.
It all started when the two were invited to a play by a mutual friend, who set the Washington Square Arch as a meeting point.
“I thought it was going to be this casual night — and there was this beautiful woman,” Scott, a schoolteacher, says of Alina. “I was a little tongue-tied.”
“He was out with a bunch of women, so my first thought was ‘Is he gay?’ ” recalls Alina, 47. “But then I could see by the way he was looking at me [that he wasn’t]!”
“Antigone” is a tragedy, but it was a love story for this pair, who went to the play and watched each other instead of the actors.
“I thought he was really smart and funny,” Alina, a novelist, says. They ended up hanging out after the play ended — Scott, 51, remembers getting home at 3 a.m. Their first official date was at the Museum of Radio & Television, now the Paley Center for Media.
Married in 1999, the Upper West Side couple now has three kids.
“Scott grew up in Harlem. I was born in the former Soviet Union and immigrated with my family,” Alina says. “But the things that are important to us are the same. And the things that look different about us are really irrelevant.
“We always point the Arch out to the kids and say, ‘No Arch, no you.’ ”
Lindsey Lazarte and Damien Schumacher
Met on the subway, February 2014
It was a typical commute for Lindsey Lazarte — until the tall blond man boarding the S train caught her eye.
“He was so cute,” says the digital sales planner, 24. “I was staring at him, smiling.”
“I noticed,” recalls Damien Schumacher, 26. “I smiled [back] at her. She continued three or four times.”
I was staring at him, smiling.
- Lindsey Lazarte
When the train pulled into Grand Central, though, she disappeared. “I was like, should I follow?” Damien recalls. But Lindsey was moving too fast. “I was embarrassed,” she says. “I was going to leave . . . but I turned around” — just as Damien walked through the turnstile.
A manager at a finance company, he’d only moved to New York from France a month before. Lindsey offered to show him around.
After almost losing her once, Damien wasted no time: “He texted me when I got to my office,” Lindsey says. The Upper West Siders had their first date soon after.
“It’s weird that people would rather go on Tinder instead of saying hi,” Lindsey says. “I’m glad I said hi.”
Stefanie Shulman and Mark Calem
Met hailing a cab, 1978
It was about as glamorous as New York got in the late ’70s: She was leaving a party at Studio 54; he was heading home after a Gloria Vanderbilt Christmas bash.
“I tried to cut in front of her to get a cab,” Mark Calem remembers.
“And I would not allow that!” says Stefanie Shulman.
They decided to share the ride. “I said I needed to go all the way across town, and he said, ‘That’s okay, I live in Queens,’ ” Stefanie says. As it happened, she lived there, too. “But I didn’t want to admit it initially, because that was not cool!”
A home borough wasn’t all they had in common. They were also both single.
The pair exchanged business cards, with Mark using the excuse that he could get her free makeup brushes, since he worked in cosmetics with Vanderbilt.
They can’t remember who called the other first — details easily lost after 31 years of marriage and two children. The couple now resides in Long Island. “You never know what’s around the next corner,” Stefanie says. “Look both ways the next time you catch a cab!”
Stephanie Fields and Nick Brown
Met in their apartment building, November 2011
“Oh s - - t!”
Those were the first words Nick Brown heard Stephanie Fields say.
The two had been neighbors in an East Village building for two months — but hadn’t yet met — when he came downstairs to find her yelling outside her door.
Stephanie, 29, had locked herself out. “Nick was on his way out, but called a locksmith. Then his mom came and introduced herself.”
Nick’s mother, Sherri, who was visiting from California, invited Stephanie to wait in her son’s place. Over a cup of tea, Sherri says, “I began to realize that they were the perfect fit for each other.”
When the locksmith finally arrived three hours later, Nick, 29, was just returning home.
“The locksmith wanted to charge $435,” says Nick, who works in tech. “That’s crazy, so I said, ‘Hang out until your roommate comes home [to let you in the apartment].’ ”
I told my co-worker that I met the man I was going to marry.
- Stephanie Fields
Nick’s mom went out for sandwiches . . . and disappeared for more than an hour.
“Thanks, Mom!” Nick says.
A week later, Stephanie dropped off a thank-you gift for Nick — kitchen utensils, as they both love to cook — and he asked her to dinner.
The day after their first date, she says, “I went into work [at a PR firm] and told my co-worker that I met the man I was going to marry.”
Six months later, Stephanie moved from her apartment to his. They’ll wed in May.
Natalia Paruz and Scott Munson
Met at the library, 1999
Anyone who’s watched the TV show “The Affair” can tell you that unbridled passion can spring up in the stacks of a library.
So can Natalia Paruz, a musician who plays the saw and busks at the Times Square subway station.
Before performing her first-ever cabaret show, she headed to the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, located at Lincoln Center, to check out some sheet music. Composer Scott Munson, now 41, was a librarian there at the time.
“She had such a beautiful smile,” he says. “I didn’t realize she smiled at everybody. I thought she was just smiling at me!”
On Natalia’s second visit, he decided to take action. On her way out, Scott breathlessly chased after the redhead and asked for . . . her ID.
“It was an excuse to meet her,” admits Scott, who told Natalia that he had to “verify” something.
“I thought it was just library business,” Natalia, 36, says. “I didn’t get it.”
Until the librarian asked her to a concert.
The musical couple, who now live in Astoria, Queens, dated a year before marrying in 2000.
“I guess somebody was watching over us from above,” says Scott, “directing our steps.”