Both say that at first it was as much the differences in their cultures that intrigued each other as their personalities. “Shosh is a very sweet, but simple person,” Boga said, while Heerter said, “Rahul is very kind and that really attracted me to him.”
Mr. Boga is from Hyderabad, India, and works as a senior product manager for the Boston office of a consulting firm. He has a bachelor’s degree in information systems from Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Hyderabad, and an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore.
Ms. Heerter has a bachelor’s degree in geography and environmental sustainability from Salem State University. She is executive assistant to the CEO of a cybersecurity company based in Somerville, Massachusetts, where the couple now lives. She is a certified yoga instructor and also served as a sergeant in the Israel Defense Forces.
Boga met Heerter’s parents in September 2021.
In October 2022, Boga introduced Ms. Heerter to her younger sister and her family, who live in Delaware, so that her sister could vouch for her to her parents.
“I really wanted his parents to accept me,” Heerter said.
Aware of the importance of having the right “biological data” to please traditional Indian parents, Ms. Heerter wrote and prepared a 12-page letter to Mr. Boga’s parents, with many more pages of photographs, all about her, her family and her work. She then had it translated into Telugu.
“We sent it to my parents, who then printed it,” Boga said. “My mom had tears in her eyes.”
During a trip to Israel in April 2023, Boga proposed on Givat Aliya beach in Tel Aviv-Jaffa.
