AUBURN — A man donning a black robe stood before the assembled crowd and told them to be seated. He then cited a U.S. Supreme Court opinion.

The event wasn’t a court hearing, though there were plenty of court clerks, prosecutors, bailiffs, marshals and judges in attendance last summer to witness the wedding vows exchanged by Assistant Attorney General Courtney Goodwin and court marshal Jermaine Arel.

Eighth District Court Judge Rick Lawrence presided over the ceremony at Martindale Country Club.

The couple had briefly considered a ceremony in a courtroom where they had both worked, but overruled the idea after learning of a recent flea infestation.

In more ways than one, it had been a courtly romance that led to the couple’s joint appearance before Judge Lawrence that day in August.

Their courtship had budded four years earlier in the corridors of justice, or, more precisely, in the hallway behind the courtrooms on the second floor of the 8th District Courthouse in Lewiston.

In January 2012, then-second-year University of Maine Law School student Goodwin started clerking for Judge John Beliveau, who ran the internship program. In that role, she spent eight months helping District Court judges draft judicial orders and review orders for factual and legal accuracy. She also observed hearings in various settings, including child protection, divorce, small claims and criminal matters.

Arel had started in 2008 working as a marshal in courts in Androscoggin, Oxford and Franklin counties. In that capacity, he would help screen courthouse visitors, set up courtrooms before hearings and help clerks and judges ferry files, warrants and orders to and from their offices.

“It’s a team effort,” he said.

Goodwin’s first impression of Arel was a fleeting image of him and another marshal darting into Beliveau’s office to respond to a duress alarm that had been accidentally activated.

Arel and Goodwin would chat in the hallway briefly during rare moments between hearings and became friends. Their relationship progressed after a few months to playing a word game through a cellphone application.

Then Arel worked up his courage and asked Goodwin on a date to see “Dark Shadows,” starring Johnny Depp, a movie they both had wanted to see.

“She said, ‘Yup. OK. Cool,'” he said.

Four movies later, they decided they should spend more time talking, so they included dinners in the mix.

They had tried to keep their courtship quiet and limit their interaction to nonworking hours, but word got out eventually.

“It was fine,” she said. “Everyone was extremely supportive.”

At that point, they acknowledged they were officially boyfriend and girlfriend.

Arel, who had joined the U.S. Army, left for basic training in St. Louis, Missouri, in August 2012 and would be gone for more than four months. The couple penned letters every day and Arel called by payphone the few times he was allowed.

It was a test of the strength of their relationship, he said.

She flew out to watch him graduate shortly before Christmas.

Goodwin moved into Arel’s home in Lisbon before they found a house in this city that they bought together after more than a year and a half of hunting.

That’s when Arel realized it was time to make it permanent.

“I just felt at that moment — that it’s obviously time,” he said.

In June 2015, Arel proposed marriage by inscribing a note attached to a bouquet of red and white roses he left on their kitchen table so she would be surprised at the end of a workday.

“Trying to pull one over on Courtney is hard,” he said. “She’s smart, so she’s going to start asking questions.”

He positioned an engagement ring in its open box next to the vase.

Arel timed their arrival so that they would pull into the driveway simultaneously. He offered to help her with her bag, an action that aroused suspicion on her part.

She unlocked the door to the sight of the flowers on the table.

Feigning surprise, he said, “Oh my God, what happened? Somebody put this here or something. That’s weird.”

The card read: “We belong together, You make me happy and I love you more than anything.”

“Yes,” she said in response.

Goodwin was surprised, but not completely.

“I had some inclinations,” she said. “I like to think I’m a detective.”

Their paths while working cross less often now. Goodwin works in child protection for the Attorney General’s Office in Rumford and Farmington.

Arel’s sergeant purposely schedules him in courthouses where she isn’t expected to be.

When she had passed her bar exam and appeared as an attorney in the Lewiston court, they kept their relationship formal, Arel addressing her as “counsel,” treating her like any other attorney.

“To me, it’s a security thing,” he said, not wanting to put her in jeopardy.

Arel: “Your honor, I think Courtney’s in the courtroom today.”

Lawrence: “Oh, great. So, I’m on my own?”

Arel: “Yep. Just jump under the desk or just try to follow us out as quickly as possible.”

During his time with the marshal service, Arel had spent a lot of time with Judge Lawrence, he said. Arel, whose father had died when he was a teenager, looked to Lawrence as a mentor and father figure, Goodwin said.

“All of the judges over there are fantastic and we would have been honored to have any of them,” she said.

Lawrence has performed other wedding ceremonies, Goodwin said.

“He has an amazing presence,” she said. “He’s able to command attention.”

She’s not religious, but Arel’s Catholic mother had hoped for a church ceremony presided over by a priest, he said.

“That was the one big hurdle,” he said.

In writing the ceremony with Judge Lawrence, Goodwin and Arel included language from the 2015 landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision Obergefell v. Hodges that guaranteed the right to gay marriage nationally.

“That, for me, that was a pretty influential decision, so it just seemed appropriate to put that in there,” Goodwin said.

Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the majority, penned, in part: “No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family. In forming a marital union, two people become something greater than once they were.”

cwilliams@sunjournal.com

Excerpt from marriage ceremony of Jermaine Arel and Courtney Goodwin:

True marriage begins well before the wedding day, and the efforts of marriage continue well beyond the ceremony’s end. A brief moment in time and the stroke of a pen are all that are required to create the legal bond of marriage, but it takes a lifetime of love, commitment and compromise to make marriage durable and everlasting.

As Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote: “From their beginning to their most recent page, the annals of human history reveal the transcendent importance of marriage. The lifelong union of a man and a woman always has promised nobility and dignity to all persons, without regard to their station in life.

“Marriage is sacred to those who live by their religions and offers unique fulfillment to those who find meaning in the secular realm. Its dynamic allows two people to find a life that could not be found alone, for a marriage becomes greater than just the two persons.

“Rising from the most basic human needs, marriage is essential to our most profound hopes and aspirations … No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family. In forming a marital union, two people become something greater than once they were.”

Obergefell v. Hodges, 576 U.S. ___ (2015).

Officiants

The following individuals are authorized to perform marriages in Maine:

• Ordained ministers of the Gospel;

• A person licensed to preach by an association of ministers, religious seminary or ecclesiastical body;

• Judges or justices (residents of Maine only);

• Lawyers admitted to the Maine Bar (residents of Maine only); and

• Maine notaries.

Maine does not have justices of the peace. Out-of-state notaries and justices of the peace cannot officiate weddings in Maine.

Source: Maine.gov