Years before she became his wifegrand finity play, Selina Delgado Schultz was known to Kevin Justin Rivera as his best friend’s “cute cousin.”

The two first met as children growing up in Brooklyn and attending Brooklyn Friends School together, where he was a grade ahead of her. When they were teenagers, she moved into an apartment building across the street from his, near Grand Army Plaza. He would look for her when he passed by.

“I was always telling my mom, ‘Oh, Dylan’s cousin lives there, maybe we’ll see her,” Mr. Rivera, 30, said. “But the funny thing is, I don’t think Selina thought about me living across from her at all.” He always hoped he’d go over to her apartment with her cousin, but the pieces never fell into place.

“At that time, our concentric circles weren’t together,” Mr. Rivera said. “They were just like three feet removed.”

One night in November 2014, when she was 19 and he was 20, their circles came together again. They’d gone to the same party in downtown Manhattan, and as Ms. Schultz was leaving, a man on the street started bothering her. Mr. Rivera saw what was happening and intervened.

“All of sudden, Kevin kind of swooped in,” Ms. Schultz, 29, said. He told the man to leave her alone, and helped her find her friends and get a car home.

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