This relationship can be saved as long as the guy's wife does not start expressing an interest in Emacs. That would, of course, put an end to the relationship, but if she's one of those "Notepad is all I need" types, there is hope this can be worked through.
"nothing fancy" that's the issue, just some jumping won't impress her; you gotta do the real crazy shit. Friggin "wife not impressed by my cooking? I make a hard boiled egg and she isn't impressed"
As someone who's been a software developer for over a decade and in IT even longer, I still don't use vi/vim for anything other than when crontabs have it set as the editor.
I refuse to see how vim and emacs is worth learning. I only use it because that's the only option when editing server files. Beyond this, I couldn't imagine coding in these environments from scratch.
You might've moved around too quickly. Stick to motion in the home row to start - hjkl. There are several ways to enter insert mode but DO NOT attempt it before she's familiar with the basic motions.
There is simply no plugin to replace that functionality. Emacs users would tell you otherwise, but you have to remember that it's all about the curves for those Lisp folks. I think this is probably a new software worth learning even if it lacks interoperability with some of your existing toolkit.