By this point in his life Beebe was developing a close friendship with the American romance novelist Elswyth Thane, who had met Beebe in 1925. Very little of their early correspondence survives, but Elswyth had idolized Beebe for years, and her first novel "Riders of the Wind" was devoted to him. The novel was an account of a young woman who falls in love with and eventually marries, a much older adventurer who strongly resembled Beebe. Beebe and Elswyth were married on September 22, 1927, when Beebe was 50. Due to Elswyth's tendency to misrepresent her age, conflicting accounts exist of how old she was when she and Beebe were married, ranging from 23 to 28. Elswyth and Beebe had an open marriage, in which neither expected sexual exclusivity from the other so long as their life together was not damaged.