Let’s be honest—we all love a love story. There’s something about them that moves us; the way two people find each other, build a connection, and then sustain it over the years. In this month’s Meet Your Neighbor feature, we’ll introduce you to a couple that, in their own words, found each other “against all statistical odds.” Adrian and Maryann Gruia are talented, vivacious, and deeply in love—and lucky for us they live right here in Ibis.

 

While the Gruias are both lively in their own ways, one of the first things you learn about them is that Maryann is the more outgoing and talkative of the two. When we met with them, she was the one who explained their story. While they are both originally from Romania, their actual meeting would occur years later and a world away: “My husband is from Bucharest and he’s ethnically Romanian, I’m from the northwest corner of Romania, and that’s the Transylvanian region, which at various times belonged to various countries and entities depending on the various wars, however when I was born and throughout my life it belonged to Romania. However, the territory itself is ethnically Hungarian. So I’m ethnically Hungarian and married to a Romanian.” The post-war period was a tumultuous time for Romania, and both Adrian and Maryann eventually migrated abroad. Both widowed, they met as adults while living in California, as she explains: “Sixteen years ago, almost to the date, we met by total coincidence at the Los Angeles Opera. Los Angeles is a town of 15 million people, so we took that as a sign that it was meant to be.” The opera in question is Mozart’s “Don Giovanni”; Adrian and Maryann met during the second act intermission which contains a seduction scene. 

 

Their professional lives kept them busy—Adrian is a retired chemical engineer and a graduate of the Polytechnical Institute of Bucharest and the Ecole Nationale Superieure de Chimie de Paris, (ENSCP) while Maryann did both her undergraduate degree and law school at UCLA. Adrian traveled a great deal during his career, as he fondly recounts: “I’m 86 years old, born just a little bit before the war, I went to school in Bucharest . . . and then I defected from Romania in 1957, I lived for three years in Paris . . . I moved to the States in December of 1960. I worked for a consulting business in the petrochemical industry—we sell our knowledge—and I spent most of my life in Chicago. Right after I retired, I moved to California because I didn’t want to spend another winter in Chicago. I traveled a lot in my professional life and then I wasn’t going to travel much anymore but then I met Maryann and she likes to travel so I’m traveling again.” Adrian’s travel resume is impressive, and this is only part of it: “I’ve been to Japan 42 times, Thailand 24 times, New Zealand 18 times—15 times working and three times vacationing.” As a couple, they continue to travel, having visited Australia several times, taken a cruise down the Nile River, and adventuring across the Middle East and Eastern Europe.  Maryann tells us they’ve visited five continents in the last year. 

 

In retirement, they divide their domestic time between Ibis and a home in Aspen, Colorado. In Aspen, they’re enthusiastic supporters of the Aspen Music Festival, where they attend three or more performances a day over the course of its annual run. “Music brought us together,” Maryann explains, “I play classical piano, though I don’t practice as much as I should, and Adrian volunteers at the music school.”  We’re told that both in Colorado and Florida, the Gruias still regularly attend operas.

 

Speaking of Ibis, here at home they’ve become an active part of the community. Maryann has a full-time job “defending the Gruia family honor” as part of an Ibis tennis team, while Adrian has devoted himself to birdwatching: “I spend hours every day on the patio watching the birds. My favorites are the Sandhill cranes---they’re birds that live for about 23 years, they’re monogamous and they mate for life. They have one or two babies every spring—there’s a pair of them that nest very close to here and I can see the babies grow up.”  Both Adrian and Maryann are also avid readers, consuming books about “anything and everything” when they’re not busy elsewhere spending time with their beloved grandchildren. 

 

So how do they like Ibis? Per Adrian, “It’s the best place I’ve lived in 86 years.” Maryann tells us that the people are what make our community special: “We’ve made some marvelous connections here in Ibis. We moved here from LA, and making connections isn’t easy at this stage of life. I didn’t expect to make so many connections and meaningful friendships, but I did.”