"We actually do travel to more distant church because of the Russian elements there...
There is an Antiochian church nearer to us, though (20 minutes vs 45)."
That figures. Your wife is Russian. If I were a Greek from the old country and my parish wasn't Greek, I might well travel too. In my state we have six Orthodox parishes, four Greek, one ROCOR and one relatively new Serbian parish without, so far as I know, a fulltime priest. Since I live about 2 miles from my Greek parish, there's little incentive to travel. The ROCOR parish is about 30 miles away and is, I think about 95% convert and very, very small, most of the area Russians having either died out, moved away or switched over to our parish for reasons sufficient to them. The Serb Church is about one hour away to the south. I've been there in the past with a Serbian friend who used to live here. Its a marvelous community with a beautiful liturgy but the people are all recent immigrants and speak very, very little English so without my buddy with me (my Serbian is very limited) I'm sort of lost when it comes to interacting with the people after Liturgy.
PS Kolo, tell your monarchist friends that Greece survived without their king for about 45 years now... :-) It's like the appendix; we really don't need one, but it's a "vestige" that we share with horses. :-)