SHE was 25. I was 24. We spent only a couple of days together and shared no language in common. But when I returned to the United States from that European music festival, I announced to my parents that I had met my future wife.

Of course, I had to convince Ester first. So I tackled the project as if it were a start-up. I began by studying Spanish. Before long, I’d quit my job and moved to her native Barcelona — where I knew no one except her — in hot pursuit. The market pressure was intense: Men would shout wedding proposals to her from moving cars. But I pressed on, undeterred. It took two years to close the deal, but she finally said yes, and we married.

Today, I have many colleagues in their 20s. When I tell them this story, they shake their heads in disbelief. “That’s crazy,” one told me. “No one would do that today.” The first point is fair: It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve been called nuts. But it didn’t seem so crazy at the time, and plenty of people who, like me, were born in the 1960s, have similar stories. This left me wondering: Are people today less romantically adventurous?

I went looking for an answer in the data on love and marriage. First and most obviously, marriage rates have plummeted in recent years. According to the Pew Research Center, in 1960, 10 percent of men and 8 percent of women over 25 were unmarried. By 2012, those numbers climbed to 23 percent and 17 percent. This is because of fewer first marriages, not rising divorce; the latter has been falling for three decades.