They married in a white-walled loft in Manhattan in October 1984. She wore a blue dress. He wore a red tie, freesias blooming from his lapel. After the ceremony, the justice told them to keep their payment and tip.

Instead, he asked them to make a donation to The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund.

The couple, Nancy King and Bingham Ray, who went on to become an independent film executive, promised to look it up. But, Ms. King acknowledged, that took more than two decades and followed her husband’s death in 2012 after a series of strokes.

Last year, she made her first donation in honor of the justice, Robert D. Lippmann.

“It was always in the back of my head,” Ms. King said, adding that she planned to donate each year “to repay the kindness that he did for us.”