Happily Unmarried — Until Her Daughters Staged an Intervention

Their first trip together, two months later, wasn’t for fun. Ms. Gonzalez’s father, who had moved back to Jamaica, was very sick. (Her mother died in 2004.) She didn’t want to travel alone, so she asked Mr. Rogers to come with her. “It was comforting to have him there,” she said.

When her father died of blood cancer that July, Mr. Rogers again flew to Jamaica to support her. By then, Ms. Gonzalez knew she was falling in love. She was hesitant to be the one to say it first, but when he picked her up at the airport after a hurricane had marooned her in Jamaica for a few extra days, “it just came out.” He said he loved her, too.

Mr. Rogers was living in Decatur, Ga., and Ms. Gonzalez was in her childhood home in Atlanta when they agreed they were ready to take their relationship to the next level in 2011. They moved in together, but didn’t consider marriage. “We were both happy,” Mr. Rogers said. “I think we both felt like, OK, we’re good. Let’s stay happy.”

After he moved into her place, where they still live, they did just that. A decade passed before Ms. Gonzalez’s daughters, Victoria and Hannah, sat her down for a talk.

In the spring of 2021, Victoria, 24, was away at college — she is now a law student at U.C.L.A. — and Hannah, 22, was graduating from high school and headed to Howard University. “They said, ‘Mommy, you and Leron love each other so much,’” she said. “‘It’s time. You all need to get married.’”

But Ms. Gonzalez said she needed time to process their request.

Mr. Rogers said he was already getting “the full court press,” he said, from friends on both sides about why he hadn’t proposed. But Victoria and Hannah knew he wasn’t avoiding marriage.