	While attending Virginia Union University, Boone met Eva Roberta Coles (8 January 1889-8 December 1902), a student at the neighboring Hartshorn Memorial College for women. Eva graduated from Hartshorn in 1899, and returned to her hometown of Charlottesville, Virginia to teach. Boone graduated a year after her, and they were married on January 16, 1901. That year they went together to the Belgian Congo, where he was assigned as a missionary. She died there on December 8, 1902, after their child had died as an infant. 