verification code goes to the gmail I'm trying to recover

Don't keep trying again and again. Each failed attempt makes Google stricter, and a few days' gap tends to go better than ten tries in an evening. When it asks questions you're not sure about, guess as close as you can instead of skipping. A roughly right month and year for when you made the account is better than nothing. And once you're in, add a phone number you actually have now.

Keep hitting "Try another way" on the recovery screen. It cycles through the other options it has, recovery phone, an old password, a device that's still signed in. The gmail option is just the first one it offers. What helps most is doing it from a phone or laptop you've signed into that account on before, on your usual home wifi. Google trusts that a lot more than a new device. If it still won't let you in it sometimes asks you to wait a few days and try again, annoying but it does work for some people.