On Halloween 2004, Modern Love debuted with an essay by Steve Friedman: “Just Friends? Let Me Read Between the Lines.” It was edited not by me, but by my wife, Cathi Hanauer, a novelist and former magazine editor.

Trip Gabriel, the Styles editor at the time, had hired us as contractors to edit a new personal essay column about relationships. Trip had been moved by our his-and-hers essay anthologies, “The Bitch in the House” and “The Bastard on the Couch,” which explored the stresses and joys of marriage, work and parenthood in the early aughts.

Cathi and I split the work of commissioning five essays to get us through our first five weeks of publication, and then she decided not to continue, leaving it to me. When I asked Trip how long he thought the column would last (i.e.: How long will I have a job?), he guessed “a year or two,” because, as he said, “these things have a shelf life.”

Twenty years and more than a thousand essays later, Trip and I sat down to talk about the column’s origins.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Daniel Jones: What made you want to start this column?

Trip Gabriel: In 2004, I was about seven years into my editorship of Sunday Styles. Part of what we covered was relationships — wedding announcements and so-called “trend” stories. But I was always a big admirer of voice-driven personal essays.