In 1979, in a middle school homeroom in Detroit, Wendy Hopkins sat next to Anthony Forbers and developed a crush.
“He was the smartest kid in the classroom,” she said. “We never met outside of school, just talked in the classroom. General kids conversating.”
After heading off to different high schools, they lost touch.
Mr. Forbers, now 53, attended a school for academically promising students in Detroit, studied engineering at GMI Engineering and Management Institute in Flint, Mich., and then received an M.B.A. from the University of Michigan. He is now the senior business analytics consultant in the Troy, Mich., office of PNC Bank, working on commercial loan efficiency, which now means he oversees paycheck-protection program data analysis.
Ms. Hopkins, 52, had a different path. She had a son at 16, then attended Wayne County Community College before going to work at the Chrysler Corporation, first in a plant and then for the United Auto Workers. She also picked up a real estate license along the way, and in 2006, when Chrysler offered buyouts, transitioned to a real estate career. She now has her own agency, Epic Realty in Southfield, Mich. Last year, she graduated from the University of Phoenix with a degree in business management.
But Ms. Hopkins never forgot that middle school crush. In 2013, when a Facebook group popped up for alumni of the middle school the two had attended, she quickly found Mr. Forbers and sent him a message.
“I was thinking, I want to talk and see what’s going on in his life,” she said. “His response was like, ‘Hey, how’s life?’ I felt like he didn’t really say anything.”
Two years later, he contacted her on Facebook with the news that he needed help with real estate that he hoped to sell, as he was in the process of getting divorced. The two met at a Starbucks on May 11.
“When I met up with her, it was an instant connection,” Mr. Forbers said. “We talked about 20 minutes about real estate, and then it was about our lives and our common interests and I was really drawn to her. Sparks flying and everything.”
He said the girl he remembered from middle school had transformed into a woman who suited him perfectly.
“All the boxes I had, I could check off,” Mr. Forbers said.
“That crush was there as if it was back when we were younger,” Ms. Hopkins said. “It just came back like that! Wow.”
They agreed to go golfing together at the end of the week, but a few days later, he called her to say that he didn’t want to wait any longer to see her again.
So the two went out for a dinner that lasted for hours. They talked on the telephone and got together several more times, still talking about the real estate transactions but also getting to know each other. Still, Ms. Hopkins said she absolutely would not consider dating him until his divorce was finalized.
“I was starting to like him,” she said. “He was sincere and honest, and that was important to me.”
She wasn’t going to take his word for it either. “So he gave me the paperwork,” she said. “I said, ‘I appreciate that, that was nice of you, now we can date.’ And we have not looked back since.”
On May 11, exactly five years after they had reconnected, the two were married at the Carter Metropolitan Christian Methodist Episcopal Church in Detroit. The Rev. Dr. Twana A. Harris, the lead pastor at the church, performed the ceremony, which was attended by only the bride’s son and the groom’s older daughter. As many as 200 people, however, watched on a video link.
