Corina Biton and Gary Steven Blicksilver are to be married Feb. 3 at Costa d’Este Beach Resort and Spa in Vero Beach, Fla. Rabbi Daniel Hadar is to officiate.
The bride, 53, is the founder and president of BloqUV, a sun-protective apparel brand based in North Miami, Fla. She graduated from the University of Miami, from which she also received an M.B.A.
She is the daughter of Jaime Biton of Condado Beach, Puerto Rico, and the late Eugenia Credi, who lived in Miami Beach.
The groom, 55, is a senior manager of price control for New York-based Lord & Taylor. He also graduated from the University of Miami.
He is the son of Arlene Blicksilver and Harold C. Blicksilver of Somerset, N.J.
The couple met at a cafe in North Miami Beach in summer 1984, and soon began dating. Mr. Blicksilver had just returned to South Florida from New York and was about to begin his senior year at the University of Miami.
After a series of starts and stops over the next three years, they lost touch, and Mr. Blicksilver eventually left Florida, and Ms. Biton, a move he still regrets.
“I had everything I ever needed in Corina,” he said. “But for reasons best attributable to youthful immaturity and a lack of patience, I let it go.”
Twenty-nine years later, a second chance arose.
In July 2016, Mr. Blicksilver, who had married and divorced in the intermittent years and was now living in Brooklyn, reached out to Ms. Biton, also long-divorced, on Facebook, where she had posted news of her mother’s death, including an obituary.
“I’m sorry about your loss, my thoughts are with you,” Mr. Blicksilver wrote, putting himself back on her radar.
In late December that year, Ms. Biton was on vacation in New York with a group of friends and decided to call Mr. Blicksilver and ask him to dinner.
They met at a cafe in Midtown Manhattan, but their first face-to-face encounter in three decades did not turn out to be the fairy tale reunion either of them had expected.
“Let’s just say it was a combination of too many martinis and too much information,” Ms. Biton said.
Mr. Blicksilver knew where he had erred. “I immediately started professing my long-lost love for her,” he said. “I probably should not have jumped into that kind of conversation so quickly, it was way too soon.”
When asked what his thoughts were upon seeing Ms. Biton for the first time in 29 years, Mr. Blicksilver began to cry. “I thought she was as beautiful as I had remembered her all those years before,” he said. “I just stood there wondering how I ever let her go in the first place.”
Ms. Biton was doing some wondering herself. “Despite the fact that our reunion date didn’t go so well, I did get a real nice vibe being around Gary,” she said. “It was like being back there again in time, and I really wanted to pick up again on a good note.”
So she decided that they would have a “redo,” as she called it, a second opportunity at their first reunion date. He agreed, and she returned on Feb. 3, 2017, to do it all over again. They had dinner at Serafina’s and drinks at the King Cole Bar at the St. Regis Hotel.
This time, they rediscovered their old chemistry.
“The redo date went extraordinarily well,” M. Blicksilver said. “We began dating again.”
On Feb. 3, 2018, they went out in New York to celebrate the one-year anniversary of their redo date. Same restaurant. Same bar. Different ending.
As they sat down next to the bar’s fireplace, Mr. Blicksilver proposed.
“Thirty years later,” he said, “everything I ever needed is back again.”
