AUBURN — On Christmas Eve, something compelled Steven Gershman to buy a copy of the Sun Journal for the first time in a long time.
Something made him browse through the dozen short stories about people whose lives had been changed by the power of faith.
Something made him stop at Sofe Silverman.
“It just hit me,” Gershman said. “I said, ‘I really want to meet her.'”
Within days, he and Silverman met.
Fell in love.
Got engaged.
“We call it our Hanukkah miracle because I met him on the first day of Hanukkah and he proposed on the eighth day,” Silverman said, squeezing Gershman’s hand as they sat together in his Auburn podiatry office.
The 63-year-olds readily acknowledge the crazy, breakneck speed of their relationship. But they say their instant connection was simply impossible to ignore.
“The chemistry was there from the first minute,” Gershman said. “I just wasn’t going to wait. I knew she was right for me and I knew what I wanted. It was an easy choice. And you know what? Every day has been better. I think back — what a miracle.”
Silverman’s Sun Journal story — about the faith she’d found in Judaism and the family she’d found at the Temple Shalom Synagogue Center in Auburn — appeared with several other vignettes on Dec. 24, Christmas Eve, and the first night of Hanukkah. It was short, just about 250 words, but it included a photo of Silverman smiling and clapping to music during Temple Shalom’s Hanukkah celebration.
Gershman was drawn to Silverman’s story and her smile.
“I thought she was really beautiful,” he said.
Gershman, a longtime local podiatrist, had been married for 35 years. He and his wife had been devoted to each other — shared everything, including their business — and her sudden death a year and a half ago devastated him. When he eventually did feel up to trying another relationship, it didn’t go well.
He wasn’t looking for someone on Dec. 24. Still, this woman had such a joyous smile.
Gershman was not a member of the synagogue, but he was connected to the community and he knew Temple Shalom was organizing a dinner at a local Chinese restaurant the next day. Maybe Sofe Silverman would be there, he thought. Maybe he should go, just to see.
Something of a homebody, Gershman had to push himself out the door. At the restaurant, he waited 45 minutes for everyone else to show.
And then, suddenly, there she was.
“I saw her come in and I lit up,” Gershman said.
He took the seat across from her.
“I saw the article about you and I really wanted to meet you,” he said by way of introduction.
Oh, OK, she said. Why?
“It surprised me,” she said.
The two spent the rest of the meal talking. There was a connection; she felt it, too. But there was also a problem. Silverman, twice divorced, planned to move in with a Virginia man she’d never met but knew through Facebook. He was moving to Maine in March with the expectation that they would start a relationship.
“I wish I’d met you sooner,” she told Gershman.
It was an obstacle, to be sure. But Gershman remained undaunted.
“I figured if it were me, I’d be there (with her) already,” he said. “So I said to myself, ‘Something isn’t fitting here.’ I figured I would see what I could do in the two months I had.”
What he could do was be her friend.
He invited her to lunch. They talked on the phone. Neither of them liked going out, so they decided to celebrate New Year’s Eve together at his home in Poland. Strictly platonic.
It turned out Gershman’s instincts were right. Things weren’t going well between Silverman and her Facebook boyfriend. Silverman was thinking of calling off their plan to move in together when the Virginia man did it for her.
So Silverman was relationship-free when she arrived at Gershman’s home for New Year’s Eve, exactly one week after he’d been drawn to that story in the paper. She asked him to sit next to her. He gave her a neck massage.
Then, well.
“Everything happened,” Gershman said.
By the first morning of 2017, they were a couple.
The day after that, as they sat at the kitchen table, Gershman asked Silverman to marry him.
“I felt really comfortable with her,” Gershman said. “That was instantaneous. At this age — I’m 63 — I know exactly what I want, and it didn’t take long to find out she had all those qualities. I wasn’t going to let her get away.”
Without hesitation, Silverman said yes. She knew what she wanted, too.
Gershman and Silverman have been inseparable in the weeks since their engagement. They have lunch together every day, snuggled together in a corner of the cafeteria at St. Mary’s Regional Medical Center, where Silverman works as an office secretary. Gershman, who is Jewish, has joined Temple Shalom and the pair shares a couch and a single prayer book every Saturday during worship. They live together in Gershman’s Poland home, where they often find themselves holding hands and cuddling.
And they talk. A lot. They’ve learned they’re both morning people, homebodies and avid hikers who — ironically enough, considering their love story — don’t care much about Valentine’s Day. They like the same quiet lifestyle. They both believe in good counseling, good communication and the power of fate.
“We get to be who we are,” Silverman said.
They’ve also discovered that they have some differences. During a tiff, she went silent when he wanted a discussion. It was the way she’d always dealt with her anger, but to him it felt like pulling away.
They got it resolved.
“The main thing is, we talked about it,” Gershman said.
Soon they’ll spend even more time together. Silverman quit her job at St. Mary’s last week and will take an early retirement. She’ll work with Gershman at his medical office.
“We’ll only work part time,” Gershman said. “We’ll have a lot of time together.”
The couple’s fast engagement has raised some eyebrows among friends and family, but congratulations have been sincere. Her two children, who haven’t met Gershman, have talked about coming in from out of state for the wedding. His mother, who lives in Boston, met Silverman last week and said their love must be destiny.
Gershman and Silverman will marry on March 12 at Temple Shalom, with a catered reception after the ceremony. They have invited the entire congregation.
“They are my family,” Silverman said.
The couple will celebrate their honeymoon with a June cruise to Alaska — a trip they’ve both always wanted to take.
Neither can believe their luck. Or fate.
“I just participated in the writing of that (December) story to inspire others, and then something like this comes out of it,” Silverman said. “This inspired in a different way than I expected.”
Tying the Knot has been a yearlong feature series about marriage and weddings. The brides and grooms, the photographers and cake designers, the officiants and venues, the families and customs — information you could use, stories you don’t usually hear. Thank you to every couple who has allowed these glimpses into their Big Day.
“We call it our Hanukkah miracle,” Sofe Silverman said of how she and Steven Gershman met on the first day of Hanukkah and got engaged at the end of the holiday, just over a week later.
“We call it our Hanukkah miracle,” Sofe Silverman said of how she and Steven Gershman met on the first day of Hanukkah and got engaged at the end of the holiday, just over a week later.
In this photo from late December, Sofe Silverman celebrates to music during the Hanukkah party at Temple Shalom Synagogue Center in Auburn. It’s this photo that attracted the attention of Auburn widower Steven Gershman. “It was like a glow that drew me to her,” he said.
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