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How a Dateline Superfan Got Correspondent Josh Mankiewicz to Officiate Her Wedding
Although husbands often get a "bad rap" on Dateline, correspondent Josh Mankiewicz helped one true crime fan get the wedding of her dreams.
As any dedicated Dateline fan knows, the husband is often the prime suspect in the harrowing crimes covered by the newsmagazine.
But Dateline correspondent Josh Mankiewicz took a moment to look at the brighter side of marriage when he helped one lucky true crime fan get her happily ever after.
Mankiewicz officiated the October 12, 2024 Seattle wedding ceremony of writer and true crime fan Sara Runnels — who once joked herself about how often marriage and murder are tied together on the NBC show — and her new husband Adam Zack.
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“I began by saying, 'I don’t know if you’ve seen Dateline, but husbands kind of get a bad rap there," Mankiewicz told HuffPost of how he approached the his wedding gig. "And when Sara invited me to perform this service, I thought it would be an opportunity to say something positive about marriage for a change."
So just how did a Dateline superfan get the long-running correspondent to take on the job? The story goes back a couple of years.
How did Dateline correspondent Josh Mankiewicz end up officiating a fan's wedding?
Mankiewicz first interacted with true crime fan Runnels after she posted on X, then called Twitter, in 2022 to poke fun at the connection between Dateline and often-guilty spouses in the show's cases.
“You want me to get a husband??? The thing that killed everyone on Dateline???” Runnels wrote at the time.
After noticing the post, Mankiewicz followed Runnels on the social media platform
“It was too good not to repost, so I did,” he told HuffPost, adding that he continued to follow Runnels after the repost and later read a moving piece for Elle she’d written about losing her mom and finding love.
The two became social media friends, of sorts, with Mankiewicz even retweeting a hilarious post she made about her second date with Zack, but Mankiewicz was surprised to one day find a direct message asking him if he’d consider officiating her wedding.
“I thought it would be a fun feature to have Josh officiate, but wasn’t sure he’d go for it,” Runnels admitted. “I DMed him to ask if it was possible, and he said he’d think about it.”
Mankiewicz was intrigued by the offer and knew it was either “a very bad idea or a very good idea," but then settled on "good," he told HuffPost. After getting the approval from Dateline executive producer Liz Cole, he decided to go for it.
“I’ve been asked to do this a couple of times before, similarly, by fans of the broadcast. But the timing was never right, or it was a destination wedding in the Azores — you know, like, it was stuff I couldn’t do,” he said.
Josh Mankiewicz got ordained so he could officiate the fan's wedding
Mankiewicz got ordained online through the Universal Life Church and prepared for the ceremony.
“It did sort of strike me that this is a moment in their lives that Sara and Adam are going to remember forever," he said. "And I wanted very badly not to screw that up. I really wanted to deliver for them and not make any mistakes."
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Although Runnels let a few close friends in on the secret, most of the wedding guests were surprised to see the famous face of the officiant.
“I told a handful of guests beforehand who were so excited to meet him and hear his Dateline voice in an element outside of their screens,” Runnels told HuffPost. “For those who learned day-of, they could not believe it was real.”
Josh Mankiewicz's marriage advice
When it came time to offer his own words of wisdom during the ceremony, the veteran true crime journalist avoided going for any “obvious” true crime jokes, like “OK now, don’t make me come back here!” he told HuffPost, and instead focused on the couple.
“I was very impressed by Adam because he’s obviously not the Dateline fan that she is. I’m not sure anyone is the Dateline fan that she is,” Mankiewicz noted. “I said he was very tolerant already in his marriage and accommodating of allowing a crime reporter to be the officiant.”
It was a happy ending for Runnels, who chronicled her dating struggles for years online before meeting Mr. Right.
Her plight was something that resonated with Mankiewicz, who didn’t get married until he was 60, when he wed Anh Tu Dang, who goes by the nickname Tee, in 2016, according to The New York Times.
“I always wanted someone who could stand up on her own and stand up to me, someone who didn’t need me but wanted to be with me, and that was Tee,” he shared at the time.
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Mankiewicz believes there is a similar happy ending in store for Runnels and Zack.
“Look, I predict a long, happy, harmonious life together for these two," he said. "The only advice I gave to them was to continue doing what they’re already doing, which is, clearly, you know, connecting with each other all the time, every day.
"I talked about how I did not settle, how I waited a really long time to get married until I found the right person," Mankiewicz added. "And that I sensed that Sara — who, you know, describes herself as like a dating expert or a dating veteran — had done the same thing: She waited until she found the right guy.”
While Mankiewicz was happy to take part in this wedding, don’t expect him to take on more officiating gigs anytime soon.
“I think this was a wonderful thing, and I was really delighted and thrilled to do it," he told HuffPost. "But I think the future is probably talking about marriages that didn’t work, not starting off one that does."
Mankiewicz is back to his regular job as a Dateline correspondent this year in the long-running newsmagazine's 33rd season. To keep up on all the latest mysteries, watch Dateline on Fridays at 9/8c p.m. on NBC or catch episodes streaming on Peacock.
