It's never too late to learn tango and fall in love

It's never too late is a series about people who decide to pursue their dreams on their own terms.

Nancy Cardwell has made two big changes in her life. The first was quitting her job as a newspaper editor in New York to volunteer for Habitat for Humanity. The second was a bit more radical: moving to Buenos Aires at the age of 62 after falling in love with tango and a tango dancer named Luis Gallardo.

Now 75, Ms Cardwell started at the Wall Street Journal in 1969 and rose through the ranks to become deputy editor - and the highest-ranking woman at the time. But in the late 1980s she was removed from the masthead as part of a wider reshuffling of senior editorial positions and found herself frustrated.

She was returning from a fishing trip to Montana in 1991 when she got off the plane at La Guardia airport, which was sweltering and sweltering. construction. "That's it," she remembers thinking to herself. "I'm out of here."

She sold her apartment in New York and moved to Americus, Georgia (population 15,000) to work for Habitat for Humanity. “You have reached the pinnacle of your profession,” she remembers thinking to herself. “You have nothing else to prove. If you don't want to do it anymore, don't. »

ImageAt home in Arlington, Virginia, Nancy Cardwell and Luis Gallardo do what they love most: tango. Credit...Melissa Lyttle for The New York Times