Ira Jay Wagner had just settled on the topic of local synagogues in Portland, Ore., in March 2022 with another guest at his neighbor’s cocktail party when Kimberly Sue Rosenberg happened to swing by.
“What about you?” he said, turning to her. “So which synagogue do you belong to?”
Her smart-aleck reply gave him pause.
“I belong to every synagogue in Portland,” she said, “and, I know everybody.” (She actually belongs to four, and Mr. Wagner had been chatting with one of her cousins).
She then moved on to work the room at the home of her business partner and friend, Mark Rosenbaum.
Ms. Rosenberg, 61, is the team lead in Portland at Coldstream Wealth Management in Bellevue, Wash., advising women, especially widows, on investments.
They each had a long, happy marriage — his wife died of breast cancer two months earlier, and her husband died of thyroid cancer in 2014. She has two sons and a daughter, and he has three daughters and four grandchildren.
“I was married happily for 40 years, and hadn’t been single for 45 years,” he said.
Mr. Wagner, 73, who grew up in Baltimore, had moved to Portland with his wife six months earlier to be near two of their daughters. They kept their house in Bethesda, Md., where he had retired as the president of European Capital, a subsidiary of American Capital, an investment company.
Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.
Thank you for your patience while we verify access.
Already a subscriber? Log in.
Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
The post Her Smart-Aleck Remark Gave Him Pause appeared first on New York Times.
