ON May 25, 2004, one of New York City’s foremost foragers, Steve Brill, and his wife, Leslie-Anne Brill, seemed to have been forsaken by nature’s generosity.

That day, their struggling newborn, Violet, had been whisked away from the delivery room at Beth Israel Medical Center. A grim-faced doctor told the couple that the umbilical cord had been wrapped around their baby’s neck, cutting off oxygen to her brain. They heard the words “epileptic” and “brain damage.” The baby was breathing with the help of a ventilator.

Such news can test love.

“We really got a chance to see on a new level what the other person was made of,” Mrs. Brill said. “It certainly brought us closer.”

The two, who married June 16, 2002, watched as Violet grew. She walked. She talked. She laughed. At 3, she has no evidence of brain damage, epilepsy or breathing difficulty. She is a happy child and now a foil to the jokes that Mr. Brill, who is more readily known by the nickname Wildman, tells during his wild-food-gathering tours through the city’s parks.

“We practiced yesterday, and she delivered her lines perfectly on time,” he said proudly.

The outgoing Mr. Brill, author of “The Wild Vegetarian Cookbook” (Harvard Common Press, 2002), was 53 when he married Mrs. Brill, who is 15 years younger. Mr. Brill, a nature lover and voracious collector of cooking pots, mushroom sculptures, edible plants, 2,000 jazz tapes, nature art, chess trophies and an otherwise infinite array of objects, had to make room for his wife, who describes herself as “Martha Stewarty.”

Mrs. Brill generally likes life pretty and orderly. He creates, she contains. “She made me box up my jazz collection,” Mr. Brill said.

Except in the kitchen, where their roles reversed. There, Mrs. Brill, a soft-spoken freelance medical writer, left dirty dishes in the sink and jar lids slightly loose. She used cooking pots indiscriminately.

No more. She puts dishes directly into the dishwasher, tightens lids and uses the pasta pot for pasta. Together they speed-walk or ride their tandem bicycle throughout the city, she of the curvaceous figure and flowing brown hair, he with his trademark hat and Robinson Crusoe beard and mustache. They practice yoga. They create Turkish meals (her recipes) brimming with wild vegetables and herbs (his finds), as Violet perches on the countertop, dropping ingredients into the food processor. They are all vegans now, although Mr. Brill characterizes his wife, an admirer of a good steak in a previous life, as “a vegan with a vacation now and then.”

For Mrs. Brill, private life with Mr. Brill can quickly turn public, particularly because Mr. Brill runs his food-foraging tour business out of their home.

The phone rings at all hours, and Mr. Brill obligingly picks up. “He’s a public person, he loves publicity,” she said. “I’m a bit more private. Sometimes it can be annoying, other times fun.” But, she said, it is just a ripple in a stream: “It’s a lot of fun being married to Steve. He’s very creative, very funny. And he’s very passionate about his interests and his family.”

After a frightening beginning as parents, they say that their love for each other and for Violet has bloomed like her namesake. “I see now that a marriage could just fall apart if you don’t have all the necessary elements: interests in common, love, the ability to coordinate when you have kids,” Mrs. Brill said. “I think that we have all those things, and that’s why our marriage is working.”

Mr. Brill agreed. “I’m more in love with her now than when I met her,” he said. “And I wouldn’t have boxed up my jazz collection for anyone else. Ever.”