 Mary Richards-Cronin returns to New York City after spending four months in Europe (“Italy, mostly,” she tells a cabdriver) following the death of her Congressman husband, Steven Cronin, in a rock-climbing accident.Rhoda Morgenstern-Rousseau also returns to her native New York to make a fresh start as a photographer after having lived in Paris for several years, where she has recently divorced her second husband, Jean-Pierre Rousseau.After decades of separation, Mary and Rhoda start to look for each other and eventually reunite outside Mary's apartment building in the Upper West Side of Manhattan (“84th and Central Park West,” Mary tells a cabdriver in an opening scene, though 415 Central Park West, at West 101st Street, was used for the building's exterior shots).