The husband-and-wife founders of Red Bank’s Two River Theater have donated $5 million to kick off a fundraiser for Riverview Medical Center, the hospital’s parent organization announced Thursday. And it’s not the first time, either.

Locust residents Joan and Bob Rechnitz made the donation to support the hospital’s robotic surgery program, according a press release issued by the Hackensack Meridian Health Riverview Medical Center Foundation. The gift was made as a “call to action” for the community to raise another $5 million in 2018, the foundation said.

The Rechnitzes also donated $5 million to Riverview in 2012. The foundation said that donation funded robotic surgical equipment that’s been used on nearly 1,000 since 2013, allowing for minimally invasive treatments of a wide variety of colorectal, general, gynecologic, and urologic conditions that previously required open surgery.

In the statement, Bob Rechnitz, 87, a foundation trustee, said he and his wife “are incredibly thankful for the care we receive at Riverview Medical Center, and that makes our giving extremely meaningful to us.”

The couple founded the nonprofit Two River Theater in 1994, moving it from Manasquan to its $15 million home on Bridge Avenue in Red Bank in May, 2005.

(Photo at top by Stacie Fanelli; above right by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge.)