Reuben and Rose met in Brownsville, Brooklyn, New York. After finishing high school, Rose went to work as a book-keeper at the Senator plant in 1934, and the two married in 1936. Reuben consulted some books and started to make a new heavy kind of ice cream. In 1959, he decided to form a new ice cream company with a foreign-sounding name. He invented the Danish-sounding 'Häagen-Dazs' as a tribute to Denmark's exemplary treatment of its Jews during the Second World War, adding an umlaut which does not exist in Danish, and even put a map of Denmark on the carton.