AUBURN — Steven Gershman and Sofe Silverman met, fell in love and decided to marry, all in one week.
How would such a rushed courtship work out?
Fabulously.
“I’m still pinching myself,” said Sofe, who changed her last name to Gershman after their wedding. “It’s just so amazing and so wonderful.”
The couple’s story was featured in the Sun Journal in February. He’d seen her photo in the paper and had felt compelled to meet her. She hadn’t known he existed until he sat down across from her at a Temple Shalom dinner. They hit it off.
Then really hit it off.
Within days, they were engaged to be married. Within weeks they were living together in his Poland home and working together at his podiatry office in Auburn.
“I felt really comfortable with her. That was instantaneous,” Steven told the Sun Journal in February. “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.”
The story earned the couple a lot of attention, especially among his patients.
“They all came in and said, ‘I saw you in the paper!'” Steven said. “They thought it was wonderful. They got to meet her because she (had started working) right here in the office. They said, ‘She’s so wonderful. You’re very lucky.'”
On March 12, the couple married at Temple Shalom in Auburn — he in a gray suit, she in a white, short-sleeve dress and black flats. They were cheered on by his mother and more than 100 people from the congregation that Sofe considered her family.
“Everybody was just so excited and so happy,” Sofe said. “One of the men holding the chuppah (canopy), he’s Catholic and he goes, ‘I’ve never seen a wedding ceremony that’s full of such laughter and joy.'”
In June, the couple celebrated with a honeymoon cruise to Alaska, where they went hiking, saw glaciers and took a train to Denali Park. Photos of that trip show them perpetually grinning, always with their arms around each other.
Having met just six months earlier, it was their first vacation together.
“We just enjoyed each other’s company and that’s 24 hours a day,” Sofe said.
Since then, life has settled down for the couple. He moved his medical office to a new location in Auburn and the two of them work there side by side every day — literally, since their desks are inches apart. Steven, now 64, is the practice’s sole podiatrist and Sofe, now 63, is office manager. The office is only open mornings, giving them plenty of time to walk in the afternoons or just sit together and talk.
Next year, they have a full slate of concerts to attend, all of them bands or singers from the 1960s, their favorite musical era.
“For the next six months I’ve got tickets coming out of my ears,” Steven joked.
There have been some adjustments to make. She’s had to learn to be more open. He’s had to learn to accept help. But both say the transition to married life has been surprisingly smooth.
“People, they’ll say that we act like we’re teenagers. Well, we feel like we’re living our teens and getting in what we didn’t get in before,” Sofe said.
“We make each other younger,” Steven agreed.
In February, they felt like fate had brought them together. They still do.
“This is the best thing I ever did in my life,” Steven said. “We really believe it was meant to be.”
Steven and Sofe Gershman met on Christmas Day 2016, after Steven saw a picture of Sofe in the newspaper and knew that he had to meet her. They decided to marry a week later. (Daryn Slover/Sun Journal)
Steven Gershman and Sofe Silverman at their March wedding, about three months after they met.
Steven and Sofe Gershman celebrated their honeymoon in Alaska in June.
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