When did Charlie Kirk and Erika Durcke meet?

1. What the core claims say — a clear origin story with a location and year that match

Media accounts and recent family statements converge on a simple narrative: Charlie Kirk met Erika Durcke in 2018 in New York City during what was scheduled as a job interview that quickly turned personal. One widely circulated account reports that the meeting occurred at Bill’s Burgers, where Charlie interviewed Erika and then asked her out, describing her as smart and elegant and deciding to date her after the conversation ^{[1] [2]}. That same narrative appears in timelines assembled after Charlie’s 2025 death, which repeatedly state 2018 as the year they first met and tie the encounter to Turning Point-related hiring or recruitment activity ^{[4] [3]}.

2. Where specific month claims come from — August versus September 2018

Sources differ on whether their initial encounter happened in August or September 2018. One profile explicitly states August 2018 for the interview-turned-date, noting the Bill’s Burgers interaction as the origin of their relationship ^[1]. Another reconstruction infers September 2018 from Erika’s Instagram remark in 2023 that their first date occurred seven years earlier “that month,” which, when reported in September 2025, implies a September 2018 date for the first date rather than the interview itself ^{[4] [3]}. Both accounts place the meeting in late summer/early fall 2018; the variation likely reflects the difference between the interview date and the first official date or differing memory framings in public retellings.

3. How first-person sources and social media were used to set the timeline

The most concrete pieces of evidence are first-person recollections released by Erika and Charlie via video and social posts, and media repackaging of those statements. A video released after Charlie’s death features him describing the interview-at-a-restaurant encounter and his decision to date Erika, which matches Erika’s 2023 Instagram narrative about their early months together ^{[2] [4]}. Journalists building timelines after 2025 relied on those public posts and on descent narratives from Turning Point–related contexts to locate the meeting in 2018; the underlying primary material comes from the couple’s own accounts rather than contemporaneous third-party reporting from 2018.

4. Reconciling small inconsistencies — interview date vs. first date and reporting gaps

The minor discrepancies across accounts are consistent with ordinary memory and reporting differences: one source records the interview in August 2018, while another frames the first date as happening in September 2018 based on later social posts ^{[1] [3]}. Neither discrepancy undermines the central fact that their relationship began in late summer 2018 in New York City. Gaps in contemporaneous archive material from 2018 and reliance on retrospective family videos and social posts from 2023–2025 account for the lack of a single precise day or an independent corroborating timestamp in the public record ^{[4] [2]}.

5. Broader timeline and why the 2018 meeting matters for later events

Pinning the meeting to 2018 explains subsequent milestones: Charlie reportedly proposed two years after their first date, in December 2020, and the couple married on May 8, 2021, in Arizona; those dates are consistently reported alongside the origin story in post-2025 coverage ^{[3] [4]}. The 2018 meeting also contextualizes statements from Erika after Charlie’s 2025 death, as outlets used the 2018 origin to frame the arc of their relationship and her public responses to later crises. The 2018 start date therefore anchors both personal milestones and media narratives about legacy and public memory.

6. Conclusion — the best-supported answer and degrees of certainty

The best-supported conclusion is that Charlie Kirk and Erika Durcke met in New York City in late summer 2018, with the initial encounter described as a job interview at Bill’s Burgers that turned into a date; sources vary between August and September 2018 depending on whether they describe the interview or first date ^{[1] [2] [3] [4]}. This conclusion rests on the couple’s own retrospective accounts and on timelines published after Charlie’s death; the evidence is consistent across those accounts, even if a single calendar day cannot be pinned down from available public material.