Joan Ellen Weidner and John Christopher Meyer III were the only ones unattached on a weeklong Princeton Class of 1969 National Parks hiking trip in October 2022. It was their first vacation alone since their spouses had died.

“Hi Joan, I’m Chris Meyer,” said Mr. Meyer, 76, at the group’s first dinner at the Paris Las Vegas hotel in Nevada.

He had read her name tag and recognized her from a photo in the class’s 50th reunion yearbook — Ms. Weidner, 72, and her husband, a Princeton alumnus, had been attending the reunion together since 1984.

Mr. Meyer, a classmate and acquaintance of her husband, graduated with a bachelor’s degree in statistics with high honors from Princeton. He also received an M.B.A. from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. In 2001, he retired as a principal in AEW Capital Management in Boston, a real estate investment firm.

Mr. Meyer’s wife of 46 years, Liza Meyer, died in 2017. Ms. Weidner’s husband of 36 years, Tom Weidner, died in 2021.

“The Class of ’69 was very supportive of me,” Ms. Weidner said. She was invited to join the hiking trip to the Grand Canyon, Bryce Canyon and Zion National Parks by the class president when spots opened up, and like Mr. Meyer, already knew many of the 18 couples on the trip.

Ms. Weidner graduated with a bachelor’s degree in commerce from Rider College, now Rider University, and received a law degree from Seton Hall University. Until 1999, she was a deputy attorney general at the New Jersey attorney general’s office in Trenton. Her first marriage ended in divorce.

“Gee, there’s an attractive, smart woman,” Mr. Meyer recalled thinking after they spoke briefly that first evening. “I’d like to get to know her better.”

Ms. Weidner did not give him a second thought.

The next morning each sat alone during a three-hour bus ride from Las Vegas to the Grand Canyon, but the next evening Mr. Meyer intentionally stood right by her on line to dinner so he could sit with her.

At dinner they “talked up a storm,” said Mr. Meyer, who also urged everyone at the table, especially her, to watch the sunrise with him the next morning at 5:30.

“The oranges and golds were beautiful,” said Ms. Weidner, who had dressed in layers that chilly morning. She took photos with her single lens reflex Canon camera of the canyon, as well as of Mr. Meyer on a rock and other classmates. “I tried to suppress the romantic feelings stirring a little bit,” she said.

The two had breakfast together, and later, when she spotted an empty seat next to him on the bus headed to Bryce National Park, she recalled blurting out, “Do you mind if I sit here?”

His reply: “I was hoping you would.”

“We talked about our spouses a lot,” she said, during the three-hour ride. “It was a strong bond. It was healing.”

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They then began sitting together on every bus ride and at every meal. They also hiked everywhere together — up to five miles and with huge changes in elevation.

“It felt like two friendly people having a nice time together,” he said.

On Friday evening, at a hotel outside Zion National Park, they eventually ended up on Mr. Meyer’s patio gazing at the stars.

“I asked if I could give her a good night hug,” he said. After she said yes, he did, and he also stole a kiss on her neck.

On Oct. 16, at the airport in Las Vegas they spoke about their feelings as they sat in a lounge before she headed home to Cranbury, N.J., and he to Marion, Mass.

“The whole idea of dating terrifies me,” she told him as they waited for their flights home. “It’s been 40 years. I don’t see myself marrying again. Tom was the love of my life.”

With all that in mind, he visited her the first weekend in November, and had planned to keep his distance romantically.

“I asked him for a kiss,” she said, a few minutes after he arrived. He was glad to respond.

A weekend before Thanksgiving she visited him in Marion. Mr. Meyer had already told his two sons, Woody and Alex, about her. But she waited to tell her son, Matt, face-to-face when he visited her from Santa Monica, Calif. for the holiday.

“I started to slowly think about life with him,” she said, as she and Mr. Meyer took turns visiting each other, and she joined him on a family trip to Puerto Rico in December.

In May, over dinner near her beach house on Long Beach Island, N.J., she told him she would say yes to “the marriage question.”

He waited until June, after he told her son, at a Weidner family reunion, about the likely proposal.

The following day, Mr. Meyer discussed a proposal with her over a piece of “sweetheart” sushi at a restaurant in Princeton.

“What is your preference: to keep things the way they are or to get married,” he asked.

“I want to get married,” she said, to which he replied: “Well, let’s do it.”

On Nov. 18, the Rev. Hannah Lovaglio, a Presbyterian pastor, officiated at the First Presbyterian Church of Cranbury, before 100 guests. Later, at the Nassau Club in Princeton, they enjoyed wedding cake, with fondant icing in golds, oranges, browns and tans, that evoked the striations of the Grand Canyon at sunrise.

“We both had very long, very good marriages,” Mr. Meyer said. “We hope and believe it’ll be just as good, if not as long.”