When Julia Anne Chance met James Walter Greene in February 1996 at her close friend’s Valentine’s Day dinner party in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn, his reputation preceded him.
“Oh, you’re Jimmy James Greene,” said Ms. Chance, the name he goes by as an artist — a painter, collagist, muralist and stained glass artist.
These days, his tile mosaic, “Children’s Cathedral,” installed late that summer, using drawings by local children, can be seen anytime at the Utica Avenue A/C subway station in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn.
Mr. Greene, 67, who grew up in Xenia, Ohio, graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in illustration from the Rhode Island School of Design. He retired as an art instructor in 2016 from PSMS 108 School of Authors in East Harlem.
“The Exchange,” his “striking collage” of a Black woman laborer seated against a page of newspaper stock market quotes, especially moved Ms. Chance three years earlier at a Kwanzaa pop-up art sale in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, where she met his wife at the time and baby daughter, who were at the party.
“We’re all friendly and party-like,” said Mr. Greene, whose two previous marriages ended in divorce.
In the summer of 1998, Mr. Greene ran into Ms. Chance and their mutual friend along Flatbush Avenue in Park Slope, Brooklyn, as his daughter, Loni, then 5, pouted while they stood outside a theater and weren’t going to see a movie.
“What’s her name with the dreadlocks?” asked Mr. Greene, who was then separated from his wife when he called their mutual friend for Ms. Chance’s number the next day. “I’d like to use her as a model.”
“Her face reminded me of a Dan mask,” he said of the art form by the Dan people of Liberia, distinguished by a high forehead.
Ms. Chance, 62, who grew up in Baltimore and has a bachelor’s degree in mass media arts from Hampton University in Hampton, Va., is now a communications specialist at the Art League, an artist organization, art school, and gallery in Alexandria, Va.
“I was flattered,” said Ms. Chance, then freelancing as a fashion and beauty writer. Until that spring, she was a fashion and beauty editor at Essence magazine.
One of her two books is “Sisterfriends: Portraits of Sisterly Love,” where her essays about Black biological sisters, or sisters by choice, accompany photographs by Michelle V. Agins, a New York Times photographer.
In exchange for serving as a model, he agreed to paint Ms. Chance’s apartment in Boerum Hill, a stop away on the A train from his place in Bedford-Stuyvesant, where later that week he took about 70 photos of her in various poses — pouring water from a vessel, reaching up aspirationally, and looking down pensively, chin on her palm.
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“I’ve maybe done 10 pieces with her in it,” he said, including her likeness appearing on a stained-glass window entitled Communion at St. Philip’s Episcopal Church in Bedford-Stuyvesant.
A week later, as promised, he patched holes in her walls and taped off baseboards, before applying her Ralph Lauren avocado green paint on one wall, and kayak bright yellow on another.
“She wanted an elongated harlequin pattern in jewel tones in a nook in the living room,” he said, and later surprised her with a stained glass piece for her window, complementing the pattern.
They often had lunch and dinner along Smith Street nearby, and toward the end of the two-week stint, they parted with a kiss.
A week after they finished painting, they enjoyed soul food on their first date at the now-closed Akwaaba Cafe in Bedford-Stuyvesant.
An early date then included a Randy Weston jazz concert in Washington Square Park in Manhattan, and the opening of an exhibit of works by the figurative painter Bob Thomas at the Whitney Museum of American Art.
In 1999, they quasi-lived together when she moved into a larger apartment a floor above hers, and he moved into her old place.
In February 2002, when he suffered a brain aneurysm, she stood by him as he went through months of hospitalization and rehab, which led him to join Alcoholics Anonymous and quit smoking.
In 2007, they began drifting apart while she lived in Bedford-Stuyvesant and he lived in Harlem, which eventually led to a breakup. But in 2013, he called her mother, who was battling A.L.S., to wish her a happy birthday, and lifted her spirits while Ms. Chance was visiting her.
“It melted my heart,” Ms. Chance said, even more so after her mother died a week later. “Within a few months, we started dating again.”
In 2020, she moved to Hyattsville, Md., to be closer to her only brother, who has autism.
Two years later, after Mr. Greene spent Thanksgiving in Hyattsville, she packed a brown bag lunch for his train trip back to New York. A card she slipped inside said: “Let’s make it official and tie the knot. What do you think?”
He replied shortly from the train.
“I think that’s a good idea,” he said, and by the next spring, they got an apartment together in Hyattsville.
On May 24, Ashley Nicole Williams, a Universal Life minister, officiated an outdoor ceremony at Brookside Gardens in Wheaton, Md., before 85 guests, where the couple jumped the broom that Mr. Greene embellished with colorful African printed fabric.
Later, the couple’s first dance was to “Love Comes Easy” by Thom Bell and Linda Creed, popularized by The Stylistics and Eloise Laws. Guests dined on jerk chicken, sweet chili salmon, and Old Bay roasted potatoes — a nod to the bride’s Maryland roots.
“I already have an idea for a mural on one of our walls,” said Ms. Chance, who loves gardening. “Lush foliage.”
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