My grandmother was from Naples, my grandfather, from Sicily. She was considered a city girl, cultured and educated. Her parents thought Sicilians were uneducated inbreeding hillbillies unworthy of marrying a Napolitan. My Sicilian great grandparents felt my grandmother's family were a bunch of stuckup city snobs.
Think of it like a woman from Manhattan, engaged to a guy from the deep south who works on a farm. It's just a clash of culture and class.