After living in Manhattan for more than two decades and New Jersey for five years, Charles “Chuck” H. Stevens and Berardino “Ben” Di Rienzo were ready for something new.
The US couple, who’ve been together for around 37 years and married for 12, say they felt as though they were spending most of their time working to keep up their lifestyles and something had to give.
“We were getting towards retirement age, and we were trying to decide what to do,” Stevens, who previously worked as a creative director, tells CNN Travel. “New York is very expensive. And we had really kind of done everything that we wanted to do.”
Although they hadn’t spent a lot of time in Italy, both felt a strong connection to the European country after having traveled over to meet the family of Di Rienzo, who is of Italian descent, and had returned a couple of times since their first trip.
New beginning
When the global pandemic hit in 2020 and they lost a friend to Covid-19, Di Rienzo and Stevens say they realized that they “needed to start enjoying” the lives that they’d “worked so hard to afford.” It was then that they decided to bite the bullet and begin looking for their very own property in Italy.
“We wanted to do more traveling, and spend more time in Europe than in the United States,” explains Di Rienzo, who previously worked as a business office manager for an assisted living company. “So our initial thought was to live six months in the United States, then six months in Italy.”
Although they were searching throughout all of Italy initially, the couple decided to focus on the town of Vinchiaturo Molise in southern Italy’s Molise, known as the “forgotten region,” which happens to be where Di Rienzo’s family are from.
“Ben said, ‘If we’re going to do this, I’d like to be close to my family,’” explains Stevens. They soon found a listing for a property in an older section of the town, where Di Rienzo’s great aunt had once lived, and were immediately impressed by the views of the Apennine mountains and the valley below the town.
“The view is what sold us on the house,” admits Stevens. The pair went on to purchase the two-bedroom property in September 2021 for just under 100,000 euros (around $108,000.) “We had seen all the one euro houses,” adds Stevens. “And I was looking at ones for around 40,000 to 60,000 euros in this town.
“But they needed a lot of work. This one just needed a little bit of cosmetic work.” “But the beauty of this one was that it came with two stone ruins that we are actually going to work on.”
Permanent move
Although the couple had planned to move back and forth between Italy and the US, after trying it out for a little while, it didn’t take long for the pair to discover that they preferred life in Italy.
“Each time that we came, it was harder to leave,” says Stevens, noting that learning that the company he worked for would be relocating to the west coast of the US played a factor in their decision.
“Both of our parents are deceased. We don’t have children. So when it came through about my job relocating, it was just kind of like, ‘Let’s do it.’” Di Rienzo goes on to explain that they knew that Italy would ultimately offer them a better lifestyle during their retirement years.
“We analyzed our quality of life in the United States versus our quality of life in Europe,” he says. “And Europe just gave us a better quality of life – and I could be closer to my family here.” Di Rienzo’s Italian heritage meant that the visa process was much simpler for the pair.
“My father was an Italian citizen when I was born,” he explains. “So legally, I just needed to be recognized as an Italian.” Stevens was able to get a carta di soggiorno, which allows him to remain in the country for five years, as the spouse of an Italian.
Once they’d made up their minds, the couple went about making arrangements to sell their home in New Jersey and completely leave their lives in the US behind, a process that took them just three months.
“We both had to quit our jobs,” says Stevens. “We literally sold [nearly] everything we owned. We booked the flight with our dog. And we were here. Our friends were like, ‘What is going on?’”