This NYC Couple Does it All. So Do Their Rain Jackets.

In a city chock-a-block with It couples, New Yorkers Michelle Li and Brendan Chareoncharutkun check the usual boxes. They’re both obnoxiously multi-talented: Chareoncharutkun, 36, is a brand strategist slash Muay Thai junkie slash chef who launched his line of Thai curry, Uncle’s Thai Food, last summer. Li, 31, is a stylist and writer who runs the influencer team at Tory Burch by day and evangelizes her well-dressed lifestyle on the internet off-hours. She’s SoHo; he’s Chinatown — assuming they’re in town. When I catch up with Li and Chareoncharutkun upstate in late January, they’re still sun-kissed from spending the holidays traveling in Thailand. 

Don’t let the #touchinggrass editorial sheen fool you, though: Brendan and Michelle are truly about that life. They met in 2019 on a press trip to Cape Cod where Li was shooting content and Chareoncharutkun was the chef hired to feed the crew of fashion girlies. “You were one of the only girls actually swimming in the lake,” Chareoncharutkun reminds Li. They’re both early risers, and Li found herself chatting with Chareoncharutkun as he prepped in the kitchen. The two became friends and tried dating, but it didn’t stick. “I probably wasn’t mature enough,” Chareoncharutkun admits. Then, two years ago, they ran into each other in front of Elizabeth Street Garden. The texting picked back up, and this time, the connection held. 

Don’t let the #touchinggrass editorial sheen fool you, though: Brendan and Michelle are truly about that life. They met in 2019 on a press trip to Cape Cod where Li was shooting content and Chareoncharutkun was the chef hired to feed the crew of fashion girlies. “You were one of the only girls actually swimming in the lake,” Chareoncharutkun reminds Li. They’re both early risers, and Li found herself chatting with Chareoncharutkun as he prepped in the kitchen. The two became friends and tried dating, but it didn’t stick. “I probably wasn’t mature enough,” Chareoncharutkun admits. Then, two years ago, they ran into each other in front of Elizabeth Street Garden. The texting picked back up, and this time, the connection held. 

A shared love of the outdoors sealed the deal. As a former Patagonia employee and Yellowstone Youth Conservation Corps leader, Chareoncharutkun is a veteran camper and trekker. Li, who grew up playing tennis and sewing her own prom and homecoming dresses in Carmel, Indiana, makes up for her greenhorn status with pure pluck: On one of her first solo adventures in New Zealand, she brought a pizza as sustenance. “I was out in the wild for three days, eating out of my pizza box and hiking,” Li says as Chareoncharutkun shakes his head in horror. “I have no idea what I’m doing. It’s nice to see how he does it very officially — he packs everything super nice.” The couple’s first excursion involved Chareoncharutkun taking a redeye to meet Li in Iceland after a wedding, where they off-roaded and hiked on almost no sleep to a cabin in the middle of nowhere. “We never want to admit that we’re tired first,” Li says. “We’re always testing each other: ‘How are you feeling?’” 

Upstate somewhere in the woods on a recent Friday, the couple are barely phased by the 12-degree windchill. As they crunch over the mid-winter snow, tucking their hands in each others’ pockets, Li leads Chareoncharutkun along the edges of the rushing stream nearby, hoping for a waterfall sighting, however tiny.

At home, Chareoncharutkun and Li’s relationship often resembles that of a creative collaboration. They shoot for each other, concept together, and spend much of any vacation considering everyone’s content needs. (Chareoncharutkun admits there’s been a learning curve to shooting Li’s outfit pics: “Obviously I’m like, ‘I got the thing! I got the photo!,’ and it’s not the way she wants.”) In rare moments of downtime, they have their Regal Unlimited passes and a critical 20-minute walk between their respective apartments. 

The key, the couple tells me, is to make it all feel fun — to enjoy the ripples. Recently, the pair found themselves exhausted after a day running one of Chareoncharutkun’s pop-ups. “It’s midnight, and I’m like, ‘Fuck, Michelle, I’m starving,’” he recalls. “And she’s like, ‘Should we go to Kellogg’s Diner?’ So we took an Uber to Kellogg’s, got home at 1 a.m., went to bed, and woke up at like 7 to go to work.”