Barbara DeBolt Roy and Robert Ford Greene were married Jan. 25 at the Naples Sailing and Yacht Club in Naples, Fla. Mary Elizabeth Beadle, a friend of the couple who was ordained by the New Seminary Church, officiated.
Ms. Roy, 85, is retired as the founder and president of a chain of children’s care centers throughout the Greater Tri-Cities region of Michigan, known as Kinder Kare, and not affiliated with the national chain KinderKare Learning Centers. Her business was based in Saginaw, Mich. She is also the former president of the Naples chapter of the Circumnavigators Club. She graduated from Michigan State University.
She is the daughter of the late Maxine A. DeBolt and the late Orville L. DeBolt, who lived in Battle Creek, Mich. The bride’s father retired as the treasurer of the Kellogg Foundation in Battle Creek.
Dr. Greene, 87, is a retired professional tennis player who competed at Wimbledon, the United States Open, the Italian Open and the French Open before going on to coach professionals, college athletes and amateurs for the next 25 years. He became one of eight elected members of the N.C.A.A. Tennis Committee that governed intercollegiate tennis, and served as athletic director at both the City College of New York and C.W. Post, as well as the tennis director at the New York Athletic Club, and at the Riverdale Tennis Club in the Bronx, which he owned.
The groom is also the author of three books on tennis.
He graduated from the College at Brockport, State University of New York, and received a Ph.D., with honors, in university administration from U.C.L.A. He also served in the Marines, as a private, first class, during the Korean War. He fought at the Battle of the Chosin Reservoir, which took place from Nov. 27 to Dec. 13, 1950, and was awarded a Purple Heart.
He is the son of the late Helen Ford Green and the late John Joseph Green, who lived in Augusta, Ga. The groom’s father retired as an opera singer who performed at social events, church services, weddings and funerals.
The bride was a widow, the groom a widower.
The couple met on eHarmony in March 2016. At the time, Ms. Roy was living in Naples and Dr. Greene, who has an apartment in Riverdale, the Bronx, was renting another in Palm Beach, Fla.
After getting acquainted through long letters exchanged via email, Dr. Greene, who normally shipped his car by rail to and from Palm Beach, boarded an airplane for the first time in 27 years, as he was eager to return to New York, where he had arranged to meet Ms. Roy.
“I could feel we had this great chemistry together,” said Dr. Greene, who is known as Bob.
They met on the steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art on an early morning in May 2016, Dr. Greene arriving with a box of chocolates.
“We had shared so much in our emails about our lives, that we felt we already knew a lot about each other,” said Ms. Roy, who has 11 children, six of whom are adopted. (Dr. Greene has no children.)
As they shared their first conversation, Dr. Greene leaned over and gave Ms. Roy a kiss on the cheek, “which felt so natural” she said. They proceeded to walk to Central Park, where they sat by the lake, as strangers began taking photos of them.
“One couple came up to us and asked how long we had been married,” Dr. Greene said.
They went to a nearby restaurant and chatted the rest of the day away, and the following day Dr. Greene picked up Ms. Roy at a Midtown hotel and they went to his Riverdale apartment.
“I knew everything was going to work out great between us,” she said, “everything just clicked.”
Ms. Roy was so certain that things would work out between her and Dr. Greene that she purchased only a one-way ticket to New York.
“I’ve been to 167 countries, and traveled around the world 14 times, and yet this was the first time in my life I had ever gone anywhere and not purchased a round-trip ticket,” Ms. Roy said. “I just had a great inner-feeling about Bob, and I knew that the day I decided to come back to Naples, he would be coming with me.”
