Vows: Back on Campus, Two Seniors Learn All About Love Again

Elaine Hoffman and Neil Ullman met three years ago as students at Fairleigh Dickinson University in Madison, N.J.

Ms. Hoffman, who lived in Berkeley Heights, N.J., thought Mr. Ullman, who resided in nearby Florham Park, might be the kind of classmate who could potentially become a “friend to spend some time with.”

“He was very handsome and down to earth and had a very appealing smile,” said Ms. Hoffman, recalling the goose bumps he gave her in September 2015.

“Whenever we spoke,” she said, “I felt a certain energy happening between us.”

Mr. Ullman, who said “the dating scene wasn’t going so well for me at that time,” returned Ms. Hoffman’s energy with a jolt of his own, shocking her by making a gift of his high school ring, which she accepted.

“I knew that Elaine was someone with whom I could build a serious connection,” he said.

They initially connected, albeit on a platonic level, and began spending a great deal of time together. “I enjoyed his company more each day,” Ms. Hoffman said. “We were like two kids, just having a lot of fun.”

Ms. Hoffman’s younger sister, Barbara Katz, took notice. “I was amazed at how giddy Elaine was when she met Neil,” she said. “I had never seen her act that way before.”

They continued to enjoy each other’s company, and over the next three years, their friendship blossomed into young love — and on Aug. 19, Ms. Hoffman, a 72-year-old widow, and Mr. Ullman, a 77-year-old widower, were married on that same F.D.U. campus where their love story took flight.

“Neil was interviewed in a class we took together at Fairleigh Dickinson, called ‘The Lives We Lived,’ and I found him fascinating,” said Ms. Hoffman, who lost her husband, Barry Hoffman, in May 2015, after 48 years of marriage. He died of complications brought on by Parkinson’s disease.

Mr. Ullman spoke about his life to his classmates, who were also enrolled in the Florham Institute for Lifelong Learning, a program at Fairleigh Dickinson that provides opportunities for older people to enjoy cultural, educational and social activities.

He graduated from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1962 with an engineering degree and worked for several companies before becoming a founding faculty member of Middlesex County College and then County College of Morris, in New Jersey. He held a master’s degree in applied statistics at Rutgers, led technology programs, and taught math, statistics and engineering. He even made furniture and wrote a children’s book.

Mr. Ullman, who lost his wife of 52 years in February 2015 to Alzheimer’s disease, chose not to divulge to the class his primary reason for enrolling in the program: “I felt rather alone,” he said, “and I wanted to meet someone with whom I could share new experiences.”

He got his wish when he met Ms. Hoffman, who grew up in Brooklyn, graduated from the State University of New York at Cortland in 1967, and received a master’s degree in student personnel services at Newark State College (now Kean University). She went on to be a career elementary school counselor and school social worker.

Ms. Hoffman waited after that first class to check out Mr. Ullman’s children’s book, “Share!” and while flipping through the pages, noticed he had acknowledged his wife, Gail Ullman. As it turned out, Ms. Hoffman had taken workshops facilitated by Ms. Ullman, who was also a counselor in the area.

“Elaine went on to speak so fondly of Gail,” said Mr. Ullman, his voice beginning to crack. “That really meant a lot to me.”

Ms. Hoffman and Mr. Ullman arranged for a first date that produced enough coincidences to make them believe that their worlds were meant to merge.

When he arrived to pick her up, he parked his Subaru Outback alongside her Subaru Outback.

And when he mentioned he had planned a one-week trip to Cambria and Pismo Beach in California to see the migration of elephant seals, butterflies, whales, and birds, and had brought the brochure for her to peruse, she excused herself, and emerged moments later with the same brochure, saying that she also had been thinking about taking the same trip.

They later went out to dinner and when it ended, each of them dropped identical Costco credit cards on the table.

“I was thinking this was a pretty good omen,” Ms. Hoffman said. “We seemed to have an awful lot in common.”

Yet what they had most in common was the death of their spouses less than a year before they met, leaving an empty void that Ms. Hoffman and Mr. Ullman have been filling for each other, one day at a time, since the first day they met.

“I think they have really helped each other process their loss,” said Ms. Hoffman’s daughter, Jessica Hoffman, who is married with three children and lives in Melrose, Mass. “Since they’ve gone through similar ordeals, Neil has been able to comfort my mother in ways I cannot understand as a daughter.”

Though Ms. Hoffman was grateful to have Mr. Ullman in her life, she was slow to turn a romantic corner with him. “Early on, I probably felt occasional streams of love for Neil,” she said, her own voice beginning to quiver. “But I was still going through grief counseling when we met, and there were times where it was very, very difficult to think I was in a relationship with another man.”

Mr. Ullman, an only child who grew up in Union, N.J., described his grieving period as being “truly alone.”

“I fully understood what Elaine was going through, but there is a relatively common difference between men and women when losing a spouse,” he said. “While women are comforted by family, friends and all the cliques they are a part of, men just do not have the same kind of support system.”

“Before Elaine came along, it seemed like all of the women I was running into were content with being single simply because they had a lot of friends,” he added. “They would argue that they didn’t need sex anymore, and I would say, ‘Yes, yes, you do, but if you don’t, well, O.K.’”

Despite having numerous shoulders to lean on, Ms. Hoffman still decided to enroll in the FILL program as a way of “maintaining an active mind,” as she put it, in the wake of her husband’s death.

“For me, the thought of romance was never a part of it,” she said. “All I wanted was to be part of this community of bright people who enjoy learning from one another — and then Neil came along.”

On their wedding day, the couple posed for photos about an hour before their ceremony at the Florham, a former Vanderbilt estate and a centerpiece of the Fairleigh Dickinson Madison campus. The 110-room mansion is testament to power and wealth, with its winding marble staircases and large Renaissance-style fireplaces built for Florence Adele Vanderbilt and her husband, Hamilton McKown Twombly, as a country estate in the late 1800s.

“Look at that guy, look how happy he is,” said Mr. Ullman’s son, Jonathan Ullman, who made the trip from Las Vegas, where he lives with his wife and three children. He was pointing to his father, who had a grandchild on his lap and was mugging for the cameras.

“He was absolutely devoted to my mother, a loving husband and caregiver right to the end,” he said. “Then he met Elaine, and they were fortunate to find each other in a place where they received the social and intellectual stimulation they needed at that time.”

Many of the couple’s 100 guests soon began filling their seats, and Ms. Hoffman and Mr. Ullman began walking toward Cantor Janet Roth, who was flanked by the couple’s family and longtime friends, as a D.J. began playing Air Supply’s “Two Less Lonely People in the World.”

In a ceremony that incorporated Jewish wedding traditions, the couple exchanged poetic vows they wrote for each other.

“How is it that in this eighth decade we have found a new, incredible life together, a miracle that truly amazes,” the groom wrote in part. “As we entered the world of oneness, where to begin, how to continue now in the supposed twilight of our being, grasping for a sliver of sunlight amidst the dark clouds, maybes abound.”

Then it was the bride’s turn. “A moment is a measure of time, bringing into presence feelings; certain energies, commitment now, not easily explained but noted,” she wrote. “Celebrated today, together amidst caring and encouraging family and friends, long-term and more recent into each of our lives, witnessing a bond of our love with devotion and strength, enfolding each of us with love!”

Moments after Ms. Roth pronounced them married, Phyllis Jonas, a friend of the bride since their days at Erasmus High School in Brooklyn, said: “Elaine’s heart was completely broken when she lost her husband. But Neil has come along and fixed it, allowing her to once again experience the joys of living.”

Later at the reception, which was held on the mansion portico adjacent to the garden, Jonathan Ullman watched as the newlyweds stood around a huge barbecue grill with family and friends, the bride giggling like a schoolgirl, the groom chuckling like a schoolboy.

“The theme of the day is that you’re never done,” he said. “It’s never too late.”