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| Marilyn Snell and Gregory Williams on April 22 during their civil marriage ceremony at the Beverly Hills Courthouse. |
Marilyn Snell craved time to herself in the summer of 2012 so that she could take stock of the emotional losses enveloping her life in San Francisco.
She found that time on the Greek island of Kythira, at a friend’s early-19th-century home. There, she stayed in a room that was once a bakery, white-walled with a curved ceiling and a fireplace that had served as the bakery oven.
A close friend and co-worker had died of cancer in 2010, after months of her caring for him. She was still struggling with sadness and the lessons he had taught her about death and human connections. Her mother, too, needed care during that time after two open-heart surgeries.
“I was in a moment where I needed to survive, and figure things out,” said Ms. Snell, now 57 and a freelance environmental journalist.
Long single, she favored solitude. Yet, alone in that white space and remembering her late friend’s belief in the lasting strength of relationships, she concluded, “I needed to think of unfinished beginnings and set miscommunications straight.”
At the top on that list was Gregory Williams, a man with whom she had had a relationship until he broke it off 24 years earlier. She knew nothing about his life since then other than that he had married.
Before departing for Greece, she had attempted to reach out to him through Facebook. His response to her inquiry offered little encouragement. “It was just kind of, ‘Thank you,’” she recalled.
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| The couple chose to have a simple ceremony with only Mr. Williams’s sister, Cynthia Williams, present as the witness. Monica Almeida |
Back home in San Francisco, stronger and healthier, she signed on to Facebook and tried reaching out again.
Her earlier relationship with Mr. Williams, which spanned five years, began in 1984, while they were commuting from Berkeley on Bay Area Rapid Transit to downtown San Francisco. Mr. Williams, a newly minted architect, couldn’t help looking her way one night when the two found themselves the sole passengers on a train car rumbling under San Francisco Bay.
“I wasn’t going to just sit there,” recalled Mr. Williams, now also 57, who crossed the car to introduce himself. By the time he disembarked, they had exchanged phone numbers. Lunch followed, and then museum visits, reggae concerts and road trips. They shared a passion for the arts and nature.
He was raised in Los Angeles and Cerritos, Calif., where his mother, Julietta, taught in the Cerritos public schools for 33 years, and his father, Amos, a Korean War veteran, retired after 36 years as a mail carrier in Los Angeles. Ms. Snell is from Phoenix, where her father, Richard, had been the chairman of Pinnacle West Capital, which owns Arizona’s largest electricity utility, and where her mother, Alice, was, among other things, deputy associate superintendent in the vocational division of the Arizona Department of Education.
“He’s quiet, and an independent, deeply creative thinker,” Ms. Snell said of Gregory Williams, who was later a founder of Mass Architecture & Design, a Los Angeles firm with commissions that have included several notable homes and restaurants and the Coffee & Milk cafe at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. “I love the way he helps me see the world from a different angle.”
For his part, Mr. Williams said, “We’ve always had very similar spirits, similar life views, whether they’re social, political, family values.”
When she entered a graduate journalism program at the University of Southern California, he left his job at a San Francisco urban historic preservation group to join her in his hometown, where they lived briefly with his parents, who invited Ms. Snell to stay in a spare room for a few months during her studies.
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| Ms. Snell and Mr. Williams in the elevator after their marriage ceremony |
“They just really epitomize to me what a loving relationship should be,” Mr. Williams’s mother said.
“They hold hands. It’s so warm.” With regard to the biracial nature of the relationship, Mrs. Williams said that she and the young couple did not blink, although even today some people outside their families and friends “still blink, they still do,” at the notion of interracial marriage.
In time, Ms. Snell’s journalism career took root when she worked at a Los Angeles-based political and cultural journal. “She has got this profound sense of empathy that seems to affect everything she does,” said Omar Dajani, a friend.
Over time, however, irritants began building. They faced the same challenges that many young couples do, with communication lapses, self-centeredness and thoughts that there might be something better out there.
The couple say that they also lacked the insight to discuss race and class, particularly at a time when acceptance was harder to come by.
“I wanted to be my own person, not having her family’s position dictating things,” Mr. Williams said of his decision to break off their earlier relationship. He began dating other women a year later, and, after two years lapsed, he called to tell her he was getting married.
“It broke my heart,” said Ms. Snell, who returned to San Francisco. “He had always been the one for me.” Over time, she had a series of relationships, some serious, she said, but “I came to love my solitary life.”
She threw herself into work as executive editor at the Utne Reader, followed by eight years as senior writer at Sierra, a national magazine published by the Sierra Club.
When she sought to contact Mr. Williams on Facebook in 2012, she did not know that during the year before he had separated from his wife of 18 years, with whom he has two sons.
Mr. Williams responded more positively to her second Facebook inquiry, telling her, “I’ve been thinking of you.” He soon flew to San Francisco, hopeful but apprehensive. “I was thinking, I will get into her car, and we will have nothing to say, and it would be horrible.”
But they clicked immediately, and after seeing a play, they went dancing at a bar called the Make Out Room, where, as Ms. Snell put it, the sparks started flying.
“He’s self-confident without being egoistic,” Ms. Snell said. “He’s his own man.” She also found that the responsibility of fatherhood had changed him.
It was in a rented cottage in Point Reyes, Calif., that they began working off those 24 years of hurt and separation and quickly came to realize how close they still were, Mr. Williams said. After dinner, they wrapped themselves in blankets and sat side by side on a long side porch, staring out at the dark forest and talking about their past insecurities and poor communication.
“I grew up Catholic, and it was kind of like confession,” Mr. Williams said. “You don’t see the person. You just spill out your soul. I told her, ‘Let’s see if there’s something here.’ And the only way we could do this was to see each other exclusively and see if there’s something there that’s worth rebuilding.”
Ms. Snell said: “I just felt it was a sacred moment. I realized then, I really want this.” The next day, walking on the beach, Mr. Williams asked how she saw herself growing old.
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| Ms. Snell at a fitting for the dress she wore to the couple’s April 30 celebration in Phoenix with 150 guests. |
“I said I had always thought I’d live by myself in a shack in the desert,” she said. “He said: ‘That’s terrible. You’re not going to be by yourself. You’re going to be with me.’”
He suggested a larger shack, a nurturing space with an interior courtyard. She began talking solar panels and rain barrels. They envisioned a future that would bring their two passions of design and nature together.
They began being in touch every day, mostly by text, morning, afternoon and night, and they usually spoke by phone at night, he said.
Cognizant of their parents’ ages and building health issues, they began discussing marriage 18 months ago. Mr. Williams met with her parents in Phoenix and asked for permission. They agreed.
“He wanted to make the formal request,” Alice Snell said later. “It was refreshing.”
He proposed to Ms. Snell in a courtyard at the back of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. For her engagement ring, Ms. Snell chose a family ring missing a stone, which was fitted with a garnet that she and Mr. Williams found for $9 in downtown Los Angeles in the Jewelry District.
They were married April 22 in the chapel at the Beverly Hills Courthouse, with Ronald L. Engen, a deputy commissioner of civil marriages for Los Angeles County, presiding. It was a simple ceremony, with the bride, the groom and Mr. Williams’s sister, Cynthia Williams, who served as witness.
They followed that up with a celebration on April 30 at the Snell home in Phoenix, attended by 150 guests, including Mr. Williams’s two sons, Gyasi Amos Williams, now 22, and Kwame Clyde Williams, now 15.
The couple plans to build a home in the Williamses’ old neighborhood, south of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, a version of the shack they designed while in Point Reyes. It will have commercial space on the bottom floor: They want a community where people know each other.
“Strangely, we are very different people, and we came apart because of our differences,” Ms. Snell said. “But when we came together, we found a way to build things.”
ON THIS DAY
When April 22, 2016
Where Beverly Hills Courthouse in California.
Details Ms. Snell wore a short white Camilla and Marc dress with an overlay embroidered with white circles and blush suede sandals. She carried a white and purple bouquet, the purple in honor of the sudden death of the musician Prince. Mr. Williams, who wore a taupe Calvin Klein suit and pink shirt, surprised her during their courthouse ceremony with a bronze pendant instead of a ring, matching his own pendant in silver. He designed the pieces, which were crafted in wax to create a cast for both pieces. The heart design symbolizes love and strong emotion. They followed up by exchanging rings at the celebration in Phoenix on April 30.
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