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The tour stop in New York included a plum Feb. 15 stint on NBC’s “Today” for an interview. Joyce Wisner proudly showed a tape of their visit to 30 Rockefeller Plaza to the attentive crowd at Eskaton prior to Franz’s reading, along with a photo of her with “my new friend, Katie Couric!”

“Never in a million years did I think I’d be sitting across from Matt Lauer,” Franz said. “My life was set. I’d worked in government for five years, worked in public relations and lobbying for another seven years and I was headed down that path in my mind. I was going to marry this woman, I was going to have a long successful career in government relations, and you couldn’t have convinced me otherwise until the two pillars in my life (my job and my fiancé) crashed on top of my head.”

The genesis for “Honeymoon with My Brother” came from Franz Wisner falling into a deep “karma slump” in 1999. Then 32, his fiancé, referred to in the book as “Annie,” dumped him 10 days before they were to be married. Soon after, he was demoted at his job. Next came a suggestion from his brother Kurt — “Why not celebrate anyway?”

The Wisner brothers had become estranged over the years, not from any disputes, but from the different paths their lives had taken. Since Franz was stuck with hotel and travel reservations he no longer needed, he called Kurt, a recent divorcee, and asked if was interested in going to Costa Rica.

The result was a positive reconnection that neither brother anticipated.

“[Annie] dumped me so close to the wedding that people were literally en route to the wedding,” Franz explained. “Food had been paid for, the cabins had been rented, the band had been paid for, so we had ‘the wedding’ anyway — just without a bride!

So instead, 75 friends and family members gathered for a weekend to prop up my spirits, toast life, and help me from collapsing,” he continued. “Then I came back to work the next week and got dumped in my work.”

Franz then remembered he still had his first class airline tickets for the honeymoon, along with the hotel reservations. Kurt, meanwhile was content selling real estate in the Seattle area when he, too, was looking for a change following his divorce.

“I cancelled the champagne and roses and wound up going on my honeymoon anyway with Kurt. He’d been divorced a year earlier and was having some frustrations in his job as well,” Franz said. “We started to reconnect on this honeymoon and started to bond. After about two weeks, I said, ‘Kurt, let’s keep going.’ He said, ‘You mean another day or two?’ I said, ‘No, let’s continue on.”

And continue on they did. The brothers sold their homes, their cars, gave away their extra clothes and visited 52 countries over the course of two years.

“At first, we thought we’d be on the road for about a year,” Franz said. “We had a pot of money and decided we would travel until this money is gone. But we stuck to third-world countries and didn’t spend as much as we thought we would.”

“I [sold real estate] for 10 years. And I never thought my life would change this dramatically — a) going from a structured business world to traveling around with my brother, and b) doing it with my brother,” Kurt said. “We weren’t that close growing up and we’d spend maybe a couple days a year together. So to spend two years with him was definitely a big change.”

Franz added, “We just didn’t make each other a priority. We talked on the phone very rarely, but there wasn’t a big issue between us per se. It was just distance and priority. It was tough to stay close.”

On their two-year sojourn, the brothers did admit to moments of just a little too much togetherness.

“One of the advantages of traveling with your brother is you can be brutally honest and tell him to quit snoring, or quit flossing your teeth in front of me,” Franz said. “With a friend, you can discard things and go your own way. But you’re stuck with your brother!”

At the same time, they worked well as a team. Kurt was the negotiator and businessman, and Franz was the diplomat/historian.

“The whole experience has not only helped me re-prioritize what’s important to me, I have a new best friend in my brother and we’re professional partners,” Kurt said. “It’s made reading the newspaper a lot more interesting each day, following different situations in different countries.”

Franz added, “If nothing else, it was an amazing trip because of my new relationship with my brother, who’s now my best friend.”

Kurt noted that they now receive numerous emails from readers who relate their own experiences of reconnecting with family members. Both said they never anticipated the kind of positive impact their experience would have on others, or being approached for a follow-up book based on further travels.

“It’s nice being a professional vagabond,” Franz said, laughing.

In addition, Franz signed a deal with Sony Pictures to make a motion picture based on the book.

Kevin Bisch, who most recently penned the Will Smith vehicle “Hitch,” will write the screenplay.

“We hope they get somebody great to play LaRue in the movie,” Franz said. “As long as it’s a quality film, that’s the important thing. I just want it to be done right.”

As for casting, Kurt has one request: “Anybody who is better looking than the actor who plays Franz! That’s all I care about.”