As Ghana has grown more stable in recent years, Professor Rathbone said, emigrants are returning and accepting these chiefly roles. They have many of the social responsibilities of politicians, but they also carry the historical gravitas of a royal title.

“He’s connected with the past and he symbolizes the past,” Professor Rathbone said of Mr. Osei.

Mr. Osei, one of 19 children, never expected to be a chief. The title, which passed through his mother’s family, had been given to an older brother, and Mr. Osei moved to New York three decades ago to carve out his own life. He started driving a taxi and bought a medallion in 1982. Within a few years, he had gotten married, had two daughters and had opened a restaurant in Harlem. But he soon divorced and found himself wiped out financially.

Mr. Osei saw Elizabeth Otolizz for the first time when she stopped to eat in his restaurant in the late 1980s and he pointed out that she had spilled okra on her blouse. She moved to New York in 1986 and worked as a home health nurse, a newspaper deliverywoman and a taxi driver. She spilled out stories about the celebrities she had met, like Snoop Dogg, and the times she had been beaten up by customers. She carried in her purse masses of wires that she used to make emergency taxi repairs.

When Mr. Osei went back to driving a taxi, he would occasionally spot Elizabeth at airport taxi stands and chat. Then, when he saw her driving her taxi, he would ask her for her phone number at stop lights. But Elizabeth, who was getting over a previous relationship, demurred.