These Long Island couples found love in senior living communities

Myrna Dubin, 88, wasn't looking for love when a new neighbor moved down the hall at her assisted living community in Jericho.

But within months of meeting 90-year-old Stanley Weintraub — who an aide described as "the nice man who just moved two doors away" — the two were sharing meals, their days and, eventually, a one-bedroom apartment.

Older adults in assisted living facilities and senior communities across Long Island have found unexpected romance, relationships that can offer companionship and joy in a stage of life more often defined by loss.

Dawn Friedland-Perez, a social worker and owner of Wisdom of the Aged in Port Jefferson Station, which provides counseling for seniors in assisted living communities, said the biggest problem seniors face is lack of companionship and connection. A new courtship can fix that.

When people are in love, they experience surges in oxytocin and dopamine, resulting in greater feelings of well-being and happiness and reduced anxiety and depression, Friedland-Perez noted.

“You’re giggling again. You’re silly again. You’re interacting again. And you have purpose again,” she said.

Here are stories from three Long Island couples who met in senior living facilities.

Friends first, then love followed

Dubin moved to Bristal Assisted Living in Jericho in 2021 with her live-in boyfriend of 11 years, who needed more assistance than she could handle alone. 

“I couldn’t let him come himself, so I came with him,” said Dubin, a retired legal assistant who’d lived in Forest Hills and had been married twice.

Several months later, that boyfriend left the Bristal to be closer to his children, and he died soon afterward. Dubin had been in her second-floor apartment for about nine months before Weintraub moved down the hall from her.

“I met her the day I moved in,” said Weintraub, who owned a leather goods manufacturing business and moved from Island Park to the Bristal in June 2022.

“Thank God Stanley came into my life,” Dubin said.

“You’d have it no other way,” said Weintraub, who is divorced.

The couple met when an aide approached Dubin, urging her to go down the hall and say hello to Weintraub, “’the nice man who just moved two doors away,’” she said.

“So the hooks went out,” Weintraub joked.

Six months later, Weintraub accepted Dubin’s invitation to move in with her.

“Because he had a studio and I had a one bedroom,” she explained.

The two didn’t actually go out on dates, Weintraub noted.

“Everything’s under one roof here,” he said. “We meet at the breakfast table, the lunch table and the dinner table.”

Neither was looking for love, they acknowledged.

“He was very good company and I liked him. And then I fell in love with him,” she said. “And I can’t imagine life without him. And I get scared when he doesn’t feel well.”

Days are spent doing their own thing: Dubin playing Rummikub and bingo, Weintraub reading the newspaper and taking naps. At night, they watch TV together and sometimes go out to dinner with friends.

“I have a brother who lives out in Greenport that we go to see every Sunday,” Dubin said. “He and my brother don’t shut their mouths for a minute: They talk about everything.”

Their advice to others who are open to  love at their age: Just go with the flow.

“I don’t know if I would survive being alone,” said Dubin, noting that people she plays games with are more like acquaintances. “He’s my friend.”

Winning raffle won her heart

Ann Katsaros and Howard Younger met at Jefferson’s Ferry, a life plan community in South Setauket. She had moved in its independent living community two months earlier than he, about three years ago.

“She knew I was coming,” quipped Younger, 83, a former data processing executive from Manhattan whose wife of 53 years died in 2019.

“I was waiting for him,” joked Katsaros, 82, a divorced former teacher from Mt. Sinai. 

Katsaros would regularly eat breakfast with a group of friends.

“That’s when Howard joined us,” she said.

“We sat at breakfast for many months," Younger said. "I didn’t really know her that well. I’m a quiet person and she’s very social."

When Jefferson’s Ferry was putting on its annual gala a couple of years ago, Katsaros decided to raffle off a custom painting.

“And, of course, Howard bought a lot of tickets," she said. "He probably bought the only tickets, and he won. And then we had to spend time together deciding on what I was going to paint."

Younger suggested she paint his former Fire Island home from a photo.

“We spent a lot of time planning that and deciding how to do it and everything, and it turned out quite well,” Katsaros said, adding that the painting is hanging in his apartment.

On the morning of her 80th birthday, the two found themselves alone at breakfast.

“I said, ‘Where are you going?” Younger recalled. “She said, “Nowhere.’ I said, “Let me take you out.’”

Their first date was at Insignia Steakhouse in Smithtown.

“Now we go there for my birthday every year,” Katsaros said.

The couple, who both still drive, go out to dinner a few times a week.

“We’re movie buffs,” Katsaros said. “We like to go to movies. We like to play RummiKub. I taught him how to play, so we play that. We’re into jigsaw puzzles, so we each have a jigsaw puzzle going at all times.”

Last year, they hosted a dinner with their children and their spouses, who are all supportive of the relationship.

“Everybody expected some sort of an announcement, but we just had a very nice dinner,” Katsaros said. “They’re so happy that we’re happy.”

Marriage, however, isn't part of the plan.

“Things are great the way it is,” he said.

“Why spoil it?” she said, adding, “It’s just so nice to have a companion at this stage of my life. “

But their stage of life does create a language problem.

“I don’t want to call him my boyfriend,” Katsaros said. “He’s not a boy. My other half? My significant other? My partner? I don’t know what to call him.”

'Go for it'

Bobbi Weinstein met Joel Karpp a week before moving into Gurwin Jewish Fay J. Lindner Residences in January 2024. She was still living in Deer Park and her husband was already living at the Commack assisted living community. 

“I was waiting to be interviewed [to move to the facility] and sitting in the lobby and not wanting to come at all and saw this man sitting in the lobby on his iPad thinking, ‘Well, it can’t be that bad because there’s a man sitting there that’s clean and looks halfway decent,' ” said Weinstein, 83, a retired family educator.

She introduced herself and told him she would be moving in.

"I hope to get to see you," she said.

"Oh, I'll see you!" he replied.

Her husband of 56 years, Gabe, had been in and out of rehab at Gurwin, and Weinstein said she felt stuck in the apartment with little to do. An administrator recommended she speak to Karpp, a retired social worker.

“Every time I saw Joel he would be very thoughtful, very caring, having discussions with me,” she said, adding, “He just listened to me. He listened and we just started talking.”

“I had been doing work here as a resident," said Karpp, 88. "I was working with some of the people who came in here who had just lost a loved one, were lonely, and so on.” 

As Gabe’s health declined, Karpp would send Weinstein notes and be available for talks. After her husband died in April 2024, the relationship evolved.

Weinstein noted that she and Karpp had run in similar circles, though their paths never crossed. They used to eat at the same Chinese restaurant in Flushing, and he worked at a camp her daughter attended, among other coincidences.

“The more we talked, the more we realized that we had a lot in common and we were comfortable spending time with each other, right?” Weinstein said.

“Yes, absolutely,” answered Karpp, who also taught at Yeshiva University’s Wurzweiler School of Social Work in Manhattan.“It wasn’t anything that we planned,” Weinstein said.

They became a couple several months after Gabe died.

“We knew how we felt,” Weinstein said. “There was something there.”

“A chemistry,” said Karpp, whose wife died five years ago.

“He would always say it was beshert,” added Weinstein, using the Yiddish word for something that’s meant to be.

Neither expected to fall in love again.

“I was married twice, for a total of almost 70 years,” Karpp said. “I didn’t think marriage was anything I was going to get into.”

“My husband was sick for two years and I said, ‘That’s it,' ” Weinstein said. “Taking care of him and schlepping to doctors, the last thing I wanted to do was get into a relationship. I wasn’t looking for it and neither was he.”

But that's how things evolved, said Karpp, noting their openness and honesty. “I’m happy,” Weinstein said.

Now the two serve on the Gurwin Resident Council, run a weekly discussion group called “Circle Chat” and play dominoes together three times a week.

“We work together as a team,” said Weinstein. “It’s wonderful to find somebody at this age.”

To others considering a romantic relationship later in life, Weinstein offers three words: “Go for it.”

“My doctor once said to me, ‘When you have less days in front of you than you have behind, live every day to the fullest,’ ” she said. “That’s how I believe. And that’s how Joel believes. That every day is a gift. That we’re blessed.”