When Amy Rae Krasner adopted a baby on her own at 47, she assumed she had shut the door on marriage for good.
Juggling the demands of single parenthood with running her own legal recruiting firm wouldn’t leave the time or energy to date, she figured, let alone to cultivate a serious relationship. Besides, she doubted many men around her age — particularly those who had already raised children — would want to spend their Saturdays at soccer games and piano recitals.
That was nine years ago. “It felt like, ‘I’m making this choice, and I’m OK with it. I’ve been alone for a long time, and really what I want is to be a parent,’” said Ms. Krasner, now 56.
A little over three and a half years ago, the door she thought had closed reopened when she met Douglas Darren Robb, a divorced father of two adult children who is now 61.
Ms. Krasner, a founding principal of Avalon Legal Search, headquartered in Houston, where she lives, had never been married. At least a decade had passed since her last long-term relationship, and she hadn’t dated at all since bringing her daughter home to a nursery painted white with a light pink ceiling.
“I adopted Charlotte when she was born, and we have been bosom buddies and BFFs and everything else for nine years,” Ms. Krasner said. “We come as a very strong package deal.”
While Ms. Krasner had trouble imagining how she and Charlotte could make room for someone new, her friend and running partner, Tama Klosek, insisted she meet Mr. Robb, a specialist in estate, gift, trust and charitable taxation at the accounting firm Deloitte. Like Ms. Krasner, he is a lawyer and a hard-core Houston Astros baseball fan. Ms. Klosek knew him through professional circles.
“She said, ‘Look, Doug is a really special guy,’” Ms. Krasner recalled. “‘He’s just a really good person, and I want you to go out with him.’”
On July 5, 2022, they met for the first time at Uchiko, a sushi restaurant in Houston, where Ms. Krasner struck Mr. Robb “as a bit of a tornado.”
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“She’s a bunch of energy and very fun,” he said.
Sensing Mr. Robb’s more reserved nature, Ms. Krasner immediately thought, “I’m a lot for him.” But as dinner progressed, she noticed how comfortable she felt in his presence. “I came in hot — nonstop chatting, telling stories — and I couldn’t rattle Doug,” she said.
Nor could he be rattled by the fact that Ms. Krasner had a young child, something he knew going into the first date. On the contrary, that detail intrigued him.
“People may describe me as a little understated, but I like unconventional, and she’s definitely unconventional,” Mr. Robb said of Ms. Krasner.
After the first meeting, their relationship unfolded gradually but steadily as they discovered a shared moral compass and similar life goals, not to mention a mutual admiration for Bruce Springsteen.
“We were a slow burn,” Ms. Krasner said. “I was always protective of Charlotte, her feelings and our relationship. Doug was patient and understanding, and our relationship grew organically.”
The same was true of Mr. Robb’s relationship with Charlotte, an ebullient blonde who loves Taylor Swift, hair salon visits with her grandmother and building Lego creations with her grandfather, who has been her main male role model since birth.
Now she has another in Mr. Robb, a fixture at her softball games and swim meets who introduced her to Elvis and Johnny Cash and recently accompanied her to a father-daughter event at school.
The 9-year-old was on hand when Mr. Robb proposed to her mother last November aboard a boat cruising the Hudson River, the day before Ms. Krasner ran the New York City Marathon for the fourth time.
A few months later, Mr. Robb moved into the home Ms. Krasner and Charlotte share — an exercise in merging schedules and decades’ worth of belongings. The couple converted one floor into a “man cave,” where Mr. Robb keeps his sports memorabilia, including 150 binders of baseball cards he has been collecting since age 6.
“It took everyone a few months to transition, but we didn’t have any major hiccups,” Ms. Krasner said.
The pair got married Nov. 8 at Congregation Beth Israel, the Houston synagogue where Ms. Krasner grew up. Rabbi David Lyon officiated, with Cantor Kenneth Feibush participating in the ceremony.
Charlotte, wearing a pearly white satin dress, served both as bridesmaid and ring bearer, wiping away tears as she stood under the huppah with her mother and Mr. Robb. “I am just very, very happy,” she said after the ceremony.
At the reception, the musician Thomas Cokinos welcomed song requests, and Charlotte approached the piano and asked him to perform “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.”
She dedicated the song to “Dad,” a word that took Ms. Krasner by surprise and made her heart swell. It was the first time, she said, that her daughter had used it to describe Mr. Robb.
The post She Adopted on Her Own. Then Love Found Both of Them. appeared first on New York Times.
