Such is the love that Bill Brockschmidt and Richard Dragisic feel for Sicily that they did a 23andMe test to see if either had Italian blood—only to find that they didn’t. Brockschmidt hails from Virginia, while his husband Dragisic is from West Texas.

Both trained as architects (Brockschmidt is a partner in the ED A-List firm Brockschmidt & Coleman) and divide their time between Manhattan and New Orleans. But neither had been to Sicily until 2000.