Zulema Mejias and Oscar Peñas in Prospect Park, Brooklyn. The couple initially thought they could afford a condominium in Windsor Terrace or South Slope. Then they started looking at modest houses. Katherine Marks for The New York Times

Zulema Mejias and Oscar Peñas first lived together in Ms. Mejias’s rent-stabilized one-bedroom near her alma mater, Pratt Institute, in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn.

She had moved there in 1999, a few years after immigrating from Cuba, and met Mr. Peñas at a dinner party in Morningside Heights, in Upper Manhattan, thrown by a mutual friend from Spain. Mr. Peñas, 51, a jazz guitarist, instructor and composer who is also from Spain, had studied music in Boston and was living with a roommate in Crown Heights, Brooklyn.

“Oscar arrived late because he got lost in the subway,” Ms. Mejias said. “He sat next to me, and we started talking. I am very talkative. We had so much fun.”

The couple, who married in 2008, still speak Spanish with each other. “When people see us on the street, they think we are tourists,” said Ms. Mejias, 61, who is now her husband’s manager.

They later moved to a Harlem co-op, but were driven out by intolerable noise. The apartment, which they had gut renovated, sold quickly, so they bought a tiny duplex studio condominium in South Slope as an interim measure, glad to return to Brooklyn.