Adam Baidawi and Alex Marxsen’s love story spans well over a decade and unfolded across four continents. Adam, the global editorial director of GQ, first met Alex, who works in global marketing for Lululemon, in their hometown of Melbourne, Australia, in 2014. “I was 21, and Adam was a few years older,” Alex remembers. “We were both still living with our parents in the suburbs, and I think I’d been abroad twice… and yet somehow, the relationship became more international than we ever could have imagined.”
Two months after they met through mutual friends as they began falling in love, Alex left Melbourne for a long-planned study abroad exchange program. “I thought I’d made the biggest mistake leaving Adam and this new relationship,” she adds. “I was beside myself for weeks but quietly hopeful we’d find our way back to each other. Adam was attempting to play the cool and indifferent older guy, but eventually cracked and flew over to meet me in the States after I wrapped my exchange program. We then took a wild trip from Madrid to Marrakech to Los Angeles, and have been together ever since.”
The couple spent the next few years of their life criss-crossing the globe. First, they moved to Dubai, where Adam launched GQ Middle East in 2018 with a groundbreaking cover starring the Egyptian-American actor Rami Malek promoting his Oscar-winning performance as Freddie Mercury in Bohemian Rhapsody, and Alex worked as a marketing manager for one of the Gulf region’s largest sports retailers. In 2021, Adam relocated to London to take up a new role as deputy global editorial director of GQ and head of editorial content at British GQ.
Then, in 2024, Adam decided it was finally time to pop the question. “He’d privately agonised over increasingly theatrical ways to propose—in London, in Australia, wherever,” Alex remembers. “Then, while on our usual summer holiday in Greece, we found ourselves at a low-key taverna perched on a quiet beach overlooking some distant islands. Adam later told me that he was overcome by the beauty of the scene.” Adam ordered Alex a Mythos beer, said he’d be right back—and unbeknownst to her, drove to the hotel, got the ring, drove back to the beach, and proposed on the spot, right as the sun was beginning to set. “The owner of the taverna kept the ouzo and beer flowing all night,” Alex says. “We’d been together for like a decade at that point, so you’d think I wouldn’t have been surprised, but I totally was. It was so special.”
In February 2026, their lives were upended again when Adam was announced as GQ’s global editorial director, necessitating a move to New York. “The loose outline we had of a 2027 wedding by an Italian lake faded away quickly once we learned that we’d have to marry before moving to New York,” Alex says. Somehow, in between packing up their lives, adjusting to Adam’s new role, and moving across the world, they found the time to get married… and fast. “We ruled out London and Australia owing to timing and learned that New York was one of the cities where you can legally get married in like, 24 hours,” the bride continues. “It suddenly made a world of sense to start our new lives in the city this way. We loved that we’d have no choice but to make quick decisions, radically simplify, and embrace the chaos.”
