Improv Class Sparked Their Long-Term Romance

“When I told my family I met this wonderful woman at an improv class, they would say, ‘She’s an actor?’ ‘No,’ I’d say, she’s a doctor.’ And my family would laugh hysterically because in a Jewish family if you can’t be a doctor, the next best thing is to marry one,” he said.

Mr. Caplan’s Jewish heritage, Dr. Cohen said, was also something she appreciated.

“Even though my mother wasn’t Jewish, I grew up in a Jewish home,” said Dr. Cohen, who was raised in Coral Springs, Fla., and lost both of her parents by the age of 32. “But I never dated a Jewish man before. There were so many things that just felt comfortable and like family right from the very start.”

Early in their relationship, Mr. Caplan said his weekdays were comprised of “planes, trains and automobiles” because he traveled extensively across the country and around the world for work. But the couple made up for it on weekends: Dr. Cohen said they were together “99 percent of the time” when he wasn’t on the road.

“I would usually sleepover at her place in Manhattan,” said Mr. Caplan, who owns an apartment in Jackson Heights, Queens. “She rarely slept over at mine,” he said, alluding to Manhattanites’ age-old resistance to having an Out-of-Borough Experience.

After dating for a year, Mr. Caplan said, “I felt that Dana and I were a solid team.” But in the years that followed, he said neither prioritized marriage.

“We both didn’t feel a strong compulsion to make it legal,” Mr. Caplan said. “In theater we say ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.’”