By Jenniffer Weigel, Tribune Newspapers – November 25, 2012

When Esther Irione, 21, made eye contact with Alain Roby, 24, at JFK International Airport in 1980, she immediately felt “a connection.””We just looked at each other and I said … ‘Wow, he’s cute.'” Esther said this out loud, to the man she was with.
Meanwhile, says Alain, “I saw this man next to Esther and I thought, ‘Wow, what a lucky guy.'”
What Alain didn’t realize was that the man next to Esther was her brother. And to Esther’s surprise, the “cute” fellow wound up at her gate a short time later: They were on the same flight to London.
“I was in New York interviewing for a job as the pastry chef at the Windows on the World restaurant in the World Trade Center, and I was on my way back to London,” Alain says.
Esther was going home to Rome by way of London after a vacation in the U.S.
“We were both on standby and we were the only two people who didn’t make the flight,” says Alain. Esther’s brother had taken one of the last seats on the plane, leaving the two inside the TWA terminal, where they talked all night. The conversation was “effortless,” Esther says now. They were eventually put on different flights the next morning. Alain’s plane left first, and he gave Esther his number before boarding, telling her to call him when she landed in London.
“I went right to a pay phone when I landed and called him at work,” she says.
“I was so surprised!” admits Alain.
Rather than continuing home to Rome, Esther spent the week getting to know London, and Alain.
“After Esther left,” Alain recalls, “I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t sleep.”
Anxious to stay close to his new love, he quickly made a trip to visit Esther in Rome, where he won over her family, and persuaded her father to let Esther return for another visit to London.
“I thought my father would have a hard time with this but he really took to Alain right away,” recalls Esther.
“The plan was we were going to commute between London and Rome,” Alain recalls.
Except, Alain soon received a telegram telling him he had gotten the job in New York, and would be starting in a few weeks.
“I remember that moment so well,” Esther says. “We were looking at that piece of paper and we were like, ‘Wow.'”
“That’s a long commute!” Alain adds.
Esther found the nearest phone booth in Piccadilly Circus and called her parents. “I said, ‘What are you guys doing next Saturday?'”
Alain and Esther wed in London on Oct. 25, 1980 — one month and 25 days after they had met.
Now, more than three decades later, the love between the pair is still going strong.

“He would buy me flowers and I would say, ‘Oh, no. We could have bought a sandwich!'”

“I remember on Thanksgiving we were the only two people walking in the streets,” recalls Alain. “Everything was empty. I thought ‘Why is everything closed on a Thursday? What’s going on?’ We didn’t get it. We don’t celebrate Thanksgiving in Europe.”
“Then we spent our first Christmas in this tiny apartment,” Esther says. “We had nothing. But Alain made me this beautiful dinner.”

Eventually Alain’s cooking talents brought him to Chicago where he worked as an executive pasty chef for a large hotel chain and he and Esther started a family. They now live in Geneva, where they own the All Chocolate Kitchen pastry and chocolate shop. It’s where Alain sells his culinary specialties, including chocolate pastries, quiche and bread pudding with butterscotch sauce, and where Esther’s artwork is on display. They have two grown sons, and their “French-Italian connection,” as Esther calls it, is still going strong.

“We grew up in two different worlds — he grew up in France and I grew up in Italy — but it is amazing how much we have in common,” Esther says. “He’s artistic with his food, and I’m artistic with my painting.”
“We feed each other, and we need each other. We didn’t even know each other when we started living together,” says Alain, placing his hand on Esther’s knee as they sit in their shop. “We were getting in tune with each other. But the love was always there.”

“Oh, without a doubt,” Esther says, looking down at a photo that Alain had given her after their first week together, predicting their future marriage. She reads the note on it aloud, now memorized because much of the ink has rubbed off over time: “To my sweet wife that I know that I love very much and wish to spend many years of love and happiness.” She wipes a tear and smiles.
“Esther is very sensitive, and I love her for this,” says Alain, before laughing and pointing to the photo. “Notice how much hair I had there.”

Although many couples might crumble under the pressure of working together all day and running a business, Esther and Alain say it has made them closer.
“We communicate, and I think it’s important to be honest with each other, so we do give real criticism if there is one to make,” Esther says. “If it’s with my painting or his cooking, we know that we can depend on each other to tell the truth.”

This year, adding to their colorful life together, Alain is attempting a Guinness World Record on Dec. 8 by creating a 45-foot candy cane that will be displayed in front of the Geneva Courthouse.
And whether you call it luck or fate that they were the only two people who didn’t get a seat on that London flight 32 years ago, the Robys remain grateful for how things played out.

“Can you imagine if she had gotten on that plane and I hadn’t?” Alain marveled. “We would not be sitting here. Think about the odds.”

Copyright © 2012 Chicago Tribune Company, LLC
jweigel@tribune.com
Twitter @jenweigel