A Marriage 50 Years In The Making

Fifty years after it was founded, Ramapo College provided Carol Ryan and Clifford Peterson with another life-changing experience: marriage. The coronavirus pandemic of 2020 added a unique opportunity: to "host" 400 wedding guests from around the world.

Ryan, 78, and Peterson, 79, were at Ramapo College in the early 1970s, he as a professor and she as a student. The liberal arts college was known for its innovative approach and interdisciplinary curriculum.

The two never met, though "we must have passed in the hallway many times," Peterson said.

In the decades since then, each married and raised, worked and studied and lost spouses. He lived in Scotch Plains, New Jersey. She lived in Ossining, New York.

Then a professor organizing the college's 50th anniversary sent members of the first graduating class a questionnaire.

"Reluctantly I did it and sent it to Charles and Charles sent it to Cliff," Ryan said.

"I got Carol's questionnaire and was very intrigued," Peterson said. "We spoke a couple of times. I was not only enchanted by her answers but how she sounded on the phone."

He invited her back to campus. They strolled around and went to lunch, where they talked for hours and found they had decades of places, people, interests and experiences in common. "It was the small world department run amuck," he said.

By the beginning of 2020 the two were planning a small wedding at the college; but in the spring, everything shut down.

"We were very disappointed; we had pictured being in the rustic garden ... but we rolled with the punches and we took it to a wonderful exciting new place," she said.

The first of two ceremonies May 30 was down at Louis Engel Park on the Hudson River, with Ossining Town Clerk Sue Donnelly presiding.

"Cliff had a top hat and tails; he looked fabulous," she said.

"I had to keep up with Carol who had this lovely filmy Downton Abbey dress," he said.

For the second ceremony, they returned to Ryan's condo in Eagle Bay and signed on to Zoom, which they hadn't heard of six months ago.

The remote officiants were Professor Anthony Padovano, theologian and author who taught Ryan's first class at Ramapo College ("not a day goes by when I don't think about something he said") and Robert Berson, head of the Ethical Culture Society of Northern Westchester, where Ryan is a longtime member ("the values of that group mirror her values and mine").

With a grandson in Dublin acting as master of ceremonies, guests from as far away as Sweden and Singapore enjoyed a video of the waterfront wedding, made speeches and toasts. The bride even "threw" the bouquet all the way from New York to Maine (having made an identical bouquet for one of Carol's old friends).

"You start to think about fate —what were the odds that we'd meet after 50 years," Peterson said. "I had my 60th high school reunion and I told the story of meeting Carol — we had just gotten engaged — and my message to some of my classmates was you can never tell. Sometimes when you least expect it, love emerges out of nowhere."