Read their wonderful story from the New York Times:
‘Maybe in Another Life’ Becomes Now
Mini-Vows
By NINA REYES JAN. 6, 2018
Susan Van Wie Kastan and Reeves Gabrels are to be married Jan. 7 in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. The Rev. Joy Burke, an interfaith minister, is to officiate at her home.
The bride, 62, will take her husband’s name. She is a marketing communications consultant in Troy, N.Y. She was also a contributor to “Philanthropic Foundations: New Scholarship, New Possibilities,” (Indiana University Press, 1999). She graduated from Dartmouth and received a master’s degree in history and education from Columbia.
She is a daughter of the late Mary Van Wie Johnson and the late J. Allen Van Wie, who lived in Troy. The bride’s father was the owner J. A. Van Wie Insurance, an independent insurance agency that was in Troy. Her mother was the bookkeeper for her husband’s insurance agency.
The groom, 61, has been a guitarist in the British alternative-rock band the Cure since 2012. He also has his own band, Reeves Gabrels and His Imaginary Friends, and released an album, “Imaginary Friends Live,” in October. Before joining the Cure, he had a longtime collaboration with the late David Bowie, with whom he worked as a guitarist, co-writer, co-producer and musical director. Ms. Kastan is the business manager for her husband.
He is the son of the late Claire Rettle Gabrels Griggs and the late C. Winston Gabrels, who lived in Bethel, N.Y. His father was a tugboat hand in New York Harbor for McAllister Towing, a marine towing and transportation company in New York. His mother retired as a secretary for a judge on the Sullivan County Court, in Monticello, N.Y. The groom is also the stepson of the late Lawrence L. Griggs, who also lived in Bethel.
The bride’s previous two marriages ended in divorce, as did the groom’s two.
The couple met in 1998, when both were browsing the poetry section at a bookstore on Union Square, in New York. They struck up a conversation, soon moved to the bookstore’s cafe, and then strolled down to the Strand in search of a book that Ms. Kastan was hoping to find.
“We just found our way to a bunch of common interests very quickly,” Mr. Gabrels said. “When we parted that day, I thought — I don’t think the word ‘marriage’ popped into my head — but I was like, I really like this person. I want to see her again.”
They were each married to other people at the time, though Mr. Gabrels and his wife were separated. But both felt the spark of something special in their encounter.
“He’s creative and considerate and he’s the kind of guy who always says, ‘I wonder what would happen if …,’” Ms. Kastan said. “And he has this great ability to laugh or apologize, or publish the results, and it becomes a song.”
Mr. Gabrels says Ms. Kastan is in many ways what he is not, organized and linear, for example, and so they complement each other.
“I think more like a chord, where it’s a stack of notes, and Susan thinks more like a melody, where there’s a single path,” he said. “It’s always interesting because we come to the same conclusion but we arrive at it in different ways.”
Nonetheless, that moment in 1998 was not the right time for the two. Mr. Gabrels ended up reconciling with his wife and then moved to Los Angeles. Ms. Kastan, who was then in doctoral studies, also returned her focus to her own family.
“We just truly enjoyed the conversation and the intellectual spark, and we sort of filed it away under, ‘maybe in another life,’” Ms. Kastan said.
They fell out of touch.
Years later, in 2006, Mr. Gabrels, now living alone in Nashville, was spending his nights scrolling through thousands of messages that had accumulated in an old email account. He came across one from Ms. Kastan that had been sent about a year earlier, not a personal note but instead announcing a new email address to all her contacts.
He sent her a message immediately. She responded, and in just that brief communication, the two found that they still had much in common. She was now divorced and he was separated and in the process of divorcing, and both had recently been through the death of their mothers.
Within a few weeks, the two had their first date. It was in Asheville, N.C., a four-hour drive from Nashville and about the same distance from the family wedding she was to attend in Durham, N.C. They met on a Sunday morning, had pancakes in a railroad-car diner, and explored the city’s churches and galleries.
A few months later, after several more long-distance dates, Ms. Kastan decided to move to Nashville.
“What the heck!” she said. “You don’t get a second chance or a third chance that often!”
