Long ago, these Long Island couples found love at Catskills' resorts

Ellen Nagel almost backed out of a singles weekend at the Concord Resort Hotel in December 1987. Discouraged by prior heartbreaks, she informed her mother, "I won’t meet anybody." 

But her mother encouraged her: "Go — it only takes one person." Nagel took her mother’s advice, and that evening in the Cordillion Room, a courtly young man tapped her on the shoulder. They spent the evening getting acquainted, talking endlessly and discovering a mutual attraction.

This year Nagel, 62, of Oceanside, and her now-husband Stuart, 73, celebrated their 36th wedding anniversary.

Like the Nagels, many Long Islanders found love while summering in the Catskills' grand hotels and bungalow colonies, part of the region known as the Borscht Belt, which drew  American Jews. An exhibit at the Catskills Borscht Belt Museum in Ellenville, "Catskills Romance: Love and Desire in the Catskills," on display through summer 2027 highlights the relationships that unfolded at these resorts about 90 miles north of New York City. 

Beginning in the early 20th century, Eastern European Jewish immigrants, seeking to escape the summer heat in New York City’s tenements, summered in the Catskills in Sullivan and Ulster counties. Excluded from resorts and clubs that barred Jewish guests, they created their own summer haven, transforming farmsteads and boarding houses into a vast network of hotels and bungalow colonies. The resort industry's decline by the 1980s is attributed to the growth of suburbs, affordable airfare and Jewish assimilation into mainstream culture, according to the museum.

"I think our mission is to celebrate this history, which has so many positives and unacknowledged contributions to the American experiment, in entertainment, culinary, comedy and mid-century architecture," said Andrew Jacobs, the museum board's president. "It really had an outsized role in mainstream American culture."

In the midst of the 1960s sexual revolution, a new demographic of younger singles visited the resorts, which had jam-packed social calendars designed to bring together men and women, according to the museum. And after dark, opulent ballrooms, majestic theaters and nightclubs set the scene.

At the famed Grossinger's Resort, The Pink Elephant Room lounge hosted games of Simon Says and dances while romantic hopefuls played tennis matches for singles. Hotelier Jennie Grossinger would sometimes personally help make a match. Free honeymoons were offered to couples who had met at Grossinger’s.

"My grandmother loved to think of the hotel as a big family," recalled her granddaughter, Susan Etess. "Families came every year to celebrate Jewish holidays, and Jennie got to know them personally."

Besides the gargantuan food portions, resort dining rooms were a hub for social connection. At the Concord in Kiamesha Lake, maître d' Irving Cohen was known as "King Cupid of the Catskills."

"Hundreds of couples met each other through Irving Cohen," said his son Arnold Cohen. 

Cohen used a pegboard to seat his guests, and the table where he chose to place you could decide your romantic fate.

"He would look at someone, size them up and put like people together, and he was right about a lot of them," Arnold Cohen said. "Here you had an intermediary trying to set you up. It was much easier to be seated at a table than to walk into a bar."

Most resorts have now been abandoned or demolished. Yet for the people who lived it, their memories of "going to the mountains" will be forever cherished.

Beyond the exhibit, here are other love stories from Long Islanders who met their partners in the Catskills:

Kenneth and Loretta Koenig

Coming from the Bronx, Loretta Koenig described the Concord as "Shangri La."

"The rooms were beautiful, the food was plentiful and they kept you busy the whole day," recalled Koenig, 82, of Great Neck.

She met her husband Kenneth, 84, who was from Queens, by the bar at a singles weekend there in 1967. She was 23, he was 26. "I met a lot of people that weekend and had dates lined up," she said. She thought Kenneth looked like a greaser in his leather jacket: "I thought of him as a Friday, not a Saturday night date. We dated awhile then went our separate ways. Then I went to Grossinger’s Hotel at another singles weekend and saw him go by. He pursued me, and the rest is history." The couple married in 1968.

"She was very beautiful," said Kenneth, smiling as he gazed at his wife. 

Loretta said she would still be spending summers in the Catskills if the resorts were still there.

"You could meet other singles in an atmosphere that was nonthreatening," she said. "You didn’t have to get on a subway — you were there. There were a lot of people, and everybody was there to meet someone."

Gail Geiver Weinstein and Mel Weinstein

For Gail Geiver Weinstein, 79, of East Rockaway, Grossinger’s was a family affair — her uncle was maître d’, her father ran the coffee shop and Weinstein worked at the outdoor pool. Her parents, Ada and Ben Geiver, even honeymooned there in 1946. She married Mel Weinstein on Thanksgiving weekend in 1976, and their love story is profiled in the 2026 documentary “We Met At Grossingers.”

"I have an album with a picture of me and Mel under the chuppah," she said. "Benny the Baker did the wedding cake. We had ice sculptures."

Harriet Fox

"Meeting and marrying my husband was totally bashert," said Harriet Fox, 87, of Merrick, using the Yiddish word for destiny. She met her late husband, William Fox, at the Concord Hotel on New Year’s weekend in the 1960s. She sat next to him at a bar. He was 28 and she was 22. "He told me his age, and I thought he was too old for me," she recalled. "He told me he doesn’t like to dance — I did. I decided he wasn’t for me and dumped him."

But he was good friends with a manager at the women's clothing stores Lerner Shops, where she worked in advertising, and after New Year's, "His friend invited him to dinner, and he mentioned he had met this crazy girl," Fox said. " ‘She’s not crazy,' " Harriet Fox said his friend replied. " 'Here is her number.' "

William Fox called Harriet, and she decided to go out with him. "I started to like him better. ... He later told me he knew from the moment he met me he was going to marry me."

Adam Cole and Betty Fuchs Cole

Betty Fuchs Cole, 57, of Commack, was a mother's helper at The Raleigh Hotel in South Fallsburg, New York, in the summer of 1987. Her husband, Adam, 58, saw her at her first camp staff meeting.

"The first time he saw me, he said he knew he was going to marry me," she recalled.

"I was like, ‘Wow!’ She was very outspoken. I like a strong woman," said Adam, who was assistant camp director.

"While everyone else was in shorts and tank tops, he came to the meeting in a suit and holding a briefcase," Fuchs Cole said. "He was a jokester from day one, trying to be funny — his attaché case had a Frisbee in it."

The couple married in 1993. Fuchs Cole noted they visited the resorts after their heyday, calling that time "the Borscht Belt's last hurrah." 

"My summers in the Catskills were the best times of my life — making friends, dancing, making bonfires," she said. "Unplugged and freedom."