Some couples who have entered into satisfying arranged marriages do attribute the success of their unions to the involvement of their parents. A. J. Khubani was 25 in 1985 when his parents tried to get him to visit Inder Sen Israni and Maya Israni in Jaipur, India, friends of the Khubani family, and meet the couple’s daughter Poonam.

“I just refused,” said Mr. Khubani, who was not keen on settling down because he had just started Telebrands, a company in Fairfield, N.J., that sells inventions via infomercials on late-night television. “I didn’t see why it was so important that I had to fly across the world to see one girl,” Mr. Khubani, now 52, remembered.

Ms. Israni, now Mrs. Khubani, was not ready, either. At the time she was a soap opera star and rising Bollywood actress.

Getting them to meet took some prodding: Mr. Khubani’s father, knowing that his son was going to Asia on business, offered to pay his way if he stopped in Jaipur. The young man and woman both relented, with the casual assumption that they would just please their parents “and that would be the end of it,” Mrs. Khubani said.

When they finally met, neither was impressed. Mrs. Khubani recalled, “It wasn’t love at first sight at all.” Love did not kick in until Mr. Khubani became sick and the young woman he had just met stayed by his bedside to care for him. “Nobody understood his accent because he was so American,” she said, and so she was his translator. For Mr. Khubani, her caring and elegant manners sealed the deal.