Love Story: Romance begun in the library stacks crossed cultural divide

Delis Ida Remien of Medford recalls her bicultural courtship with husband, George.

George and I met in 1964. He was 17, and I was 16. We lived in the Crotona Park area of the Bronx, and we both had part-time jobs after school. He was a delivery boy for the local grocer; I was a page in the West Farms Library. On my way to work, I’d walk by the grocery, where he and the other delivery boys were usually gathered outside.

He found out my name was Delis Ida Montanez and began stopping by the library. He pretended to study while I tried to look busy restacking shelves and trying to avoid eye contact with him. We eventually began talking to each other through the stacks. Weeks later, he gathered the courage to ask me out. I nervously agreed to go bowling with him.

I had just accepted my first-ever date and now had to face my mami and papi to ask for permission. I told my mom and she asked, “Is he a good boy? Is he going to school? Is he respectful? What do his parents do?”

And, of course, the most important question, “Is he Puerto Rican?”

“No!” I answered, “Mami, we are just going on a date!”

She replied, “Wait until your father comes home.” Once my father arrived, the dialogue sounded like song lyrics from the movie “West Side Story.”

George met my family before our date, and I met his. Concerns regarding differences in language, religion and culture were resolved after we all got to know one another.

For sure, the German kitchen and Puerto Rican kitchen were wildly different. George was as much over-the-moon for the taste and smell of onions and garlic sautéing in olive oil, espresso coffee and arroz con pollo (rice with chicken) as he was with me. We became inseparable and our parents got along very well.

That fall, George attended Farmingdale State College. He lived on campus and came home every weekend to see me. I was now going to Mills College of Education in Manhattan. Life was good.

When George was accepted into Cornell University in upstate Ithaca in 1967, it was a “Yea!” and a “Yikes!” moment. It was an honor, but the distance between Ithaca and the Bronx seemed insurmountable! The way to resolve the dilemma was to get married.

Our parents were not happy, but gave in when they realized how it might impact George’s studies and that I, too, would fall prey to sadness. He began classes and, on June 22, 1968, we got married at the Riverside Church in Manhattan. The ceremony was in Spanish and English.

The time we spent in Ithaca was wonderful. After George graduated in 1969, we came back to the Bronx and soon moved out to Medford. I returned to Mills College of Education and graduated in 1971.

In 2003, I retired as the first middle-school guidance counselor hired by the South Country School District in Bellport. George retired in 2004 as a social worker with Eastern Suffolk BOCES.

How lucky we are to have our daughter and two sons living nearby, providing us with the opportunity to participate in the lives of our seven grandchildren.

We celebrated our 50th anniversary in June with our family and friends in Provincetown, Massachusetts, where we honeymooned and are fortunate to own a small cottage.

It is a cliché, but time does seem to fly. Marriage is hard work, but so worth it ... “in sickness and in health, 'til death do us part.”

—With Virginia Dunleavy