In honor of National Grilled Cheese Day, here’s the story of one of the cheesiest couples we know.

Adam Schneider and Vanessa Palazio

In 2011, Vanessa Palazio and her boyfriend, Adam Schneider, bought a 300-square-foot space in the Lower East Side and opened a grilled cheese shop called Little Muenster. Since then they’ve launched a takeout spot in Dumbo and popped up at foodie festivals like Hester Street Fair, Urban Space, DeKalb Market, and Googa Mooga. Next year, they’ll join Sprinkles and Umami Burger at the World Financial Center’s new food court, slated to open in January.

Ms. Palazio and Mr. Schneider met through mutual N.Y.U. friends. For their third date, he asked her to watch him compete in a mac n’ cheese cooking contest. “I wasn’t initially concerned with impressing him, so I voted for someone else,” said Ms. Palazio. “He lost.”

Ever since then, cheese has constantly seeped into the folds of their relationship. They see a dish while out at dinner and imagine it reinvented as a grilled cheese, and they bring cheese plates to their friends’ parties (chunks of Saxelby’s cheese they’re testing for the restaurant tend to build up in their refrigerator).

When they met, Ms. Palazio and Mr. Schneider were different in many ways. She’s a Nicaraguan, raised in Brooklyn, who grew up on casillo melted inside fresh tortilla. He’s an all-American white boy from the L.A. suburbs who favored the classic white-bread grilled cheese. These days he prefers milder cheeses while she favors the stronger, more pungent, nutty and grassy varieties like bleu cheese.

Suzanne Hodges Little Meunster

But they’re also similar in ways, starting with their subtly matching looks. When The Local spoke to them at their Lower East Side shop, the fresh-faced Ms. Palazio wore soft brown curls and a little yellow cardigan. Mr. Schneider sported a wrinkled smile and boyish hair, and a navy sweater with tan elbow patches. They’re both 29 going on 30, born a week apart.

When they first began to look for a space for Little Meunster, Ms. Palazio and Mr. Schneider received two very important pieces of advice from their respective parents: develop a detailed business plan, and for the sake of your relationship, keep your business and your love life separate, as well as your roles within it.

“Adam has a specific set of roles and so do I,” said Ms. Palazio, who grew up working the cheese counter at her parents’ supermarket. “In that regard, we try not to step on each other’s toes. I make a decision, fine. If he does, fine. Sometimes things happen and we have to deal with it. I’d love to say we can leave it all at work—”

“But it’s not true,” Mr. Schneider interjected. He usually keeps to his tasks in marketing and business development and Ms. Palazio to her day-to-day running of the shops and staff, but arguments from work will occasionally spill onto dinner-table discussion at home. For the most part, however, the couple relishes an ability to work side-by-side. “I wake up and I’m excited. I get to go to work with him,” said Ms. Palazio. “You share all the high moments together. It’s fun to celebrate your achievements with the person that you love, as well.”

Suzanne Hodges Little Meunster’s cheese grater
chandelier.

Neither Schneider nor Palazio were nervous about starting a restaurant with such a specific food item and style in mind. “We were pretty confident,” said Ms. Palazio. “It was during the time of the recession, so single concept food ideas were doing pretty well. We targeted a certain market where people could go out to eat, but not spend so much money.” No grilled cheese on the menu costs more than $8.25. One popular variety is inspired by Mr. Schneider’s love of pasta: gruyere and chevre with leeks and pancetta on country white. Ms. Palazio looked to a favorite salad she makes in creating a Stilton bleu grilled cheese with pear puree.

Neither Mr. Schneider nor Ms. Palazio were nervous about starting a restaurant with such a specific food item and style in mind. “We were pretty confident,” said Ms. Palazio. “It was during the time of the recession, so single concept food ideas were doing pretty well. We targeted a certain market where people could go out to eat, but not spend so much money.” No grilled cheese on the menu costs more than $8.25, which the Lower East Side store’s mostly young and less wealthy crowd can appreciate. One popular variety was inspired by Mr. Schneider’s love of pasta: gruyere and chevre with leeks and pancetta on country white. Ms. Palazio looked to a favorite salad she makes in creating a Stilton bleu grilled cheese with pear puree.

Now the couple is expanding west, at the new World Financial Center. The tryout process felt more stomach-churning than a college interview. “We walked out and were like, that was really cool, but we are way too young of a business,” said Mr. Schneider. “There’s no way they’d want us.” But Little Meunster beat out about 300 other prospective businesses, perhaps in part because it was born and raised in New York. “They were looking for real, young, hip New York brands that are not your standard food-court cuisine,” said Ms. Palazio.

She and Mr. Schneider are preparing for their new location’s opening next year, though they’ll have to juggle their plans with a much more monumental step in their lives: their wedding. They hesitated to make cheese an integral part of the November nuptials in Ms. Palazio’s hometown of Managua, Nicaragua, but caved when a friend designed an irresistible cheese-inspired save-the-date card, illustrated with a colorful set of vintage illustrations of Chesire, Gorgonzola, Koboko, Cheddar, Roquefort, Gruyere, Port du Salut, and Stilton. “We’re going to be bringing wheels of cheese with us,” said Ms. Palazio. “Which is kind of illegal.”

Though Ms. Palazio’s mother teased the couple for sending out a card that looked more like a store-opening announcement than an invitation to join them in celebrating a lifetime of future happiness, Mr. Schneider and Ms. Palazio agreed that it was better not to fight the cheese. Better to let it melt into their lives like it always has. “It’s us,” said Ms. Palazio.