He’s 22. She’s 81. Their Friendship Is Melting Hearts.
- 6 years ago
He’s 22. She’s 81. Their Friendship Is Melting Hearts.
But she was a friend, and the joke set off a chain of events
that led to his flying to Palm Beach to actually meet Rosalind Guttman, the woman he had known only through the Words With Friends game on his phone.
“It wasn’t like anything spectacular, or different than you speaking to one of your friends.”
Their friendship began entirely at random when Words With Friends, a Scrabble-like
phone game, assigned the two strangers to play each other last summer.
According to Ms. Butler, Ms. Guttman doesn’t know what all the fuss is about, since “people should be behaving this way with each other all the time.”
But she did send Ms. Butler an email soon after they left for New York.
Ms. Butler, senior minister at Riverside Church in Manhattan, wanted to tell the story
of their friendship, so she asked if he would put her in touch with Ms. Guttman.
But he had no plans to meet her until Amy Butler, the mother of one of his friends, overheard him talking about his online pal.
After the women talked on the phone, Ms. Butler decided an in-person meeting “would really finish the story off,” she said.
“It was like they were magnetically drawn to each other.”
They didn’t have much time — just a lunch and a quick tour of Palm Beach —
but the photos he tweeted afterward attracted widespread attention, including from the news media.
But she was a friend, and the joke set off a chain of events
that led to his flying to Palm Beach to actually meet Rosalind Guttman, the woman he had known only through the Words With Friends game on his phone.
“It wasn’t like anything spectacular, or different than you speaking to one of your friends.”
Their friendship began entirely at random when Words With Friends, a Scrabble-like
phone game, assigned the two strangers to play each other last summer.
According to Ms. Butler, Ms. Guttman doesn’t know what all the fuss is about, since “people should be behaving this way with each other all the time.”
But she did send Ms. Butler an email soon after they left for New York.
Ms. Butler, senior minister at Riverside Church in Manhattan, wanted to tell the story
of their friendship, so she asked if he would put her in touch with Ms. Guttman.
But he had no plans to meet her until Amy Butler, the mother of one of his friends, overheard him talking about his online pal.
After the women talked on the phone, Ms. Butler decided an in-person meeting “would really finish the story off,” she said.
“It was like they were magnetically drawn to each other.”
They didn’t have much time — just a lunch and a quick tour of Palm Beach —
but the photos he tweeted afterward attracted widespread attention, including from the news media.