It’s Never Too Late to Fall in Love

For Phyllis Raphael, 86, a chance meeting on the street turned into a get-together. Then came a date. A second and third followed. So did a love affair.

“It’s Never Too Late” is a series that tells the stories of people who decide to pursue their dreams on their own terms.

In 2015, nine months after her husband died, Phyllis Raphael, now 86, ran into Stan Leff, now 89, while exiting Citarella, a grocery store on Manhattan’s Upper West Side.

“Stan remembered me from a party on Fire Island in 1974. He said I was on a deck serving hors d’oeuvres. But I didn’t remember him,” said Ms. Raphael, a Brooklyn-born writer. “We’d known each other peripherally and seen each other at parties but never spoke to each other until that day.”