When Christopher Jones met Marissa Follo Perry at a bus stop, his infatuation with her was immediate. It was a big day for them both: the first day of kindergarten.
Mr. Jones and Ms. Follo Perry, both now 35, were each raised in Italian-American families in Wolcott, Conn. From that first meeting in 1990, when they were just 5, Mr. Jones says the embers of his ardor remained aflame, in elementary school through high school and beyond, despite a clear lack of fanning by Ms. Follo Perry.
“Chris’s attention made me uncomfortable,” Ms. Follo Perry said. “Plus, in high school he was somewhat of a bad boy and I was a rule follower.”
“I can’t explain it, but I fell for her deep down,” Mr. Jones said. “Marissa has always been a character, hilarious and sassy.”
Over the decades, they kept in contact through infrequent phone calls and social media pings. Ms. Follo Perry followed her passion for the theater and became a director and actress, appearing in the original Broadway cast of “Sister Act” and in “Hairspray,” among other productions. But while her professional life soared, her dating life floundered.
“I was a dating dumb-dumb,” she said. “I once bought a motorcycle for one guy who then disappeared on it and dated someone who kept it a secret that he was already married.”
“I learned about my self worth the hard way,” she added.
In 2017, she received a message on Facebook from Mr. Jones, then living in Florida, telling her that he dreamed about her. The contact began a friendly exchange. Ms. Follo Perry found her discomfort with Mr. Jones’s attention had shifted, as did her assessment of his character.
Her friend, Ms. Follo Perry discovered, had grown into a sincere, sweet man — and a very attractive one as well. In 2010, after the death of his mother, Victoria Jones, Mr. Jones had cleaned up his bad-boy act. He now works as a technician at Hartford Hospital while studying to be an electrician. “Chris asked that I give him a chance to earn his trust,” she said. “No one had ever put that effort in to me before.”
A few months later, the two got together in West Palm Beach, Fla. Both feared first-date awkwardness, but it was clear their long friendship was leading somewhere entirely new. Soon Mr. Jones moved North.
In 2019, Mr. Jones proposed onstage at the closing night of a production of “Sister Act,” which Ms. Follo Perry directed at the Downtown Cabaret Theater in Bridgeport, Conn. Ms. Follo Perry joked that her beloved had finally made his stage debut.
On April 17, the couple, surrounded by 50 well-spaced friends and family, married at the Newtown Meeting House in Newtown, Conn. Michelle Gotay, a Universal Life Minister, a friend of the bride and a comedian, officiated. (To the delight of the crowd, Ms. Gotay insisted the couple apply hand sanitizer before exchanging rings.) Special acknowledgment was given to Beulah Jones, Mr. Jones’s grandmother, now 96, and Eleanor Follo, the bride’s grandmother, 94.
“My favorite part of life with Chris is the quiet parts,” Ms. Follo Perry said. “He’s so secure and even on my bad days, he thinks I’m pretty great.”
