Paul Innella

Man of Enthusiasms

"He was like me," said Lucy Aita about Paul Innella, her fiancé. "He talked too much."

They talked daily for weeks before their first date (they had "met" through a singles Web site). After Mr. Innella moved in with Ms. Aita, her son, and her parents in East Brunswick, N.J., he would call "a zillion times a day."

"Hi, honey! Are you O.K., really? Talk to you later!" "Hi honey, I'm 15 minutes from home!"

He was a bright man and knew it — "That's O.K., honey, I'll do it!" — but he was also boyishly enthusiastic. He loved food, giving surprise gifts, bowling and bouncing hard and high on a trampoline with Ms. Aita's son. In the first flush of courtship, rather than leave her to drive home to Brooklyn for clean clothes, Mr. Innella would happily swing over to the nearby Macy's to buy some.

He was a hard-working adult — 33 and a systems analyst with eSpeed at Cantor Fitzgerald — but also a childlike Disney fanatic. He had been to Disney World nine times, collected hundreds of Disney movies and cartoons, and let's not even talk about the memorabilia. "He was so excited about 'Snow White' coming out on DVD," said Ms. Aita. "Because it would have all the extras."