The forced proximity of lockdown led to a lot of breakups . But it reminded this duo why they chose each other in the first place. Surrounded by family on a beach in Carlsbad, California, one evening in August, Mitchell Fonberg got down on bended knee.
“It’s not often you get a second chance at love ,” he told Caryn Fonberg as the sun set over the Pacific Ocean behind them. “You’re the best person in the whole world, and I want to spend the rest of my life with you.” It wasn’t the first time Mitchell had asked Caryn to tie the knot .
In December 1995, he hid a ring in a gift-filled bag at a Hanukkah celebration. They married the following May during a jubilant ceremony attended by 400 friends and family in Dallas. Then in 2010, they told a much smaller crowd - their two young kids - that they were divorcing.
Both separately refer to that day as the worst of their lives. Their journey back to one another is thanks in no small part to an unlikely source: the pandemic. For many relationships, the shutdown acted like an accelerant.
New relationships intensified quickly or fizzled out entirely. And the forced proximity meant that longer-term partners saw cracks in their bond that might have otherwise stayed hidden. For the Fonbergs, though, it instigated a living arrangement that wouldn’t be out of place in a romance novel.
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