“I was worried it was going to be a little too much like Grand Central station,” said Mr. McDonald, who in a neat twist of fate bought the house for $1.2 million that December, saving it from the wrecking ball.

One bright Monday, he and Ms. Karr-McDonald sat in the tiled sunroom, reminiscing about how they met, and how Mr. McDonald, who was living in a single-room-occupancy hotel at the time, came to be a homeowner and family man.

“He was penniless,” Ms. Karr-McDonald said.

Mr. McDonald broke in: “I showed her the room and told her, ‘This is it.’ ”

Husky-voiced and clad in a bright red mini-dress — a nod, perhaps, to her glamorous past (she was once married to Abby Mann, the screenwriter) or to her upbringing as the child of activists, “a red-diaper baby,” as her husband said proudly — Ms. Karr-McDonald recalled her week with Ms. Savino, the young runaway who later shot herself in the face when she was unable to sell a gun she had stolen. When Mr. McDonald delivered the eulogy at the Church of St. Agnes on 43rd Street, she assumed he was the minister.

“I’m Jewish, so what did I know?” Ms. Karr-McDonald said. “He gives this amazing eulogy about how April is a shining star in the night sky. Outside on the steps, I say in typical Hollywood style, ‘I own the rights to her life.’ He says, ‘Right, but she’s dead’ and asks me for a drink. We go to the Lion’s Head and he’s rubbing my leg and I’m thinking, ‘Everything you hear about priests must be true.’ ”

Mr. McDonald said, “After we adjusted who we were, I knew I had her when I put her in a cab and she looked back at me out of the window.”

Later, he read her script, which never did get made. By the time he had finished it, he said, he knew he would marry her. “It was a view into her soul, and she had captured what I knew was there in Grand Central station.”