Love stories

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Updated: March 13, 2012 8:05AM

When Ruben met Rachel, it was because of an errant email. He lived in Waco, Texas. She lived in Bangkok. The email triggered a romance.

When Scott met Isabel, it was New Year’s at a Manhattan bar. He noticed the woman dressed up in what he calls “Ava Gardner gloves — elbow length, satiny.” She thought he was smart and funny but to play it safe, she asked to see his ID.

And when Bobbi met Sandi, both were in the Women’s Army Corps at Fort McClellan, Ala. They kept their romance a secret to avoid being dishonorably discharged.

Love comes in all shapes and sizes and often when it’s least expected. Need examples? Read the 37 interviews in a new book, All There Is: Love Stories from StoryCorps (Penguin, $24.95), edited by Dave Isay and released in time for Valentine’s Day.

StoryCorps, a national nonprofit project affiliated with public radio, tapes interviews with ordinary people who often tell extraordinary stories about their lives. Here are the abbreviated stories of the aforementioned couples:

Ruben and Rachel

Ruben Paul Salazar wasn’t related to Rachel Perez Salazar. But in 2007, an email sent to RP Salazar, meant for Rachel, arrived in Ruben’s inbox.

Ruben, who was 35 and working in a Waco computer lab, determined it was intended for Rachel, 40, at the Asian Development Bank. He relayed it to her, adding a P.S.: “How’s the weather there in Bangkok?”

Her reply — “Weather in Bangkok is lovely; it’s the best time to visit” — began a volley of emails, followed by phone calls.

He found her photo online and thought, “Wow, she’s really beautiful!” and says, “I felt like I could tell her anything.” He sent flowers with a note thanking her for “this newfound friendship.”

Within six months, Rachel says, “I felt like I was falling in love with this guy who was 9,000 miles away.”

Rachel, who grew up in the Philippines, mentioned she might visit relatives in California. Ruben replied, “If you’re ever in Texas, come over.”

Despite some doubts, she did and stayed a week. One night on the dance floor, she told Ruben, “You’re the sweetest guy I’ve ever met.”

On bended knee, he asked her to marry him.

In November 2007 — 10 months after the errant email — she did.

“Life is full of surprises,” Rachel, 45, says. “You never know what’s coming, but be prepared to grasp it.”

Ruben, 40, advises any couple with kids or without [like them]: “Be really honest with each other, so there are no surprises when you finally do get married.”

Scott and Isabel

When he was 31, Scott Wall, a New York photographer, thought Isabel Sobozinsky, then 32, a San Francisco auditor, looked “ravishing” at a Manhattan bar just after midnight on Jan. 1, 1992.

She says she liked his smile and “he seemed like he could be intelligent.” But because she had been warned that Manhattan is “so big and scary,” she asked to see his identification.

They talked all night. After she returned to San Francisco, they kept in touch through letters and cassette tapes.

“There was no email, no cellphones then,” he says, “so I would send her a tape with me on one side and say, ‘The other side is for you to record something for me.’ ”

He sent small gifts, including his grandmother’s toaster — “all I could afford” — with a note, “I hope some day to be there with you when you toast my English muffins for me.”

When Scott’s father was dying of lung cancer in Buffalo, Isabel came to visit and meet his family, which he says “was a brave and wonderful thing to do.”

In the summer of 1992, he moved to San Francisco to be with her, but seven years passed before a friend of Isabel’s said to him, “Girlfriends don’t want to be girlfriends forever.”

They got married in 2000.

Scott, 51, advises other couples: “Remember why you need each other.” Isabel, 53, says, “Never go to bed angry. Always remember what made you fall in love.”

Bobbi and Sandi

At 19, Bobbi Whitacre and Sandi Cote had joined the Women’s Army Corps — “patriotic idiots,” as Bobbi says now. It was 1968, and one night they were watching a TV special of Bob Hope entertaining the troops in Vietnam, singing “Thanks for the Memory.”

Bobbi says, “I looked at Sandi. She looked at me, and we both knew.”

Sandi says, “We decided to make our own memories.”

At Fort McClellan, they kept their romance a secret, but on a three-day pass to Atlanta, in a “cheesy little motel,” as Bobbi puts it, they performed their own marriage ceremony using a Gideon’s Bible.

A year later, they left the Army, although Sandi says, “Bobbi wanted a military career.”

“I wanted you more,” Bobbi adds.

Bobbi became a management analyst with the federal government; Sandi, a homemaker. (In 1980, they adopted Sandi’s nephew who was then 15.) They lived in Bowling Green, Ohio, Washington and in Georgia Center, Vt. In 2000, when Vermont approved same-sex civil unions, they combined their names, becoming Bobbi and Sandi Cote-Whitacre.

They officially wed in 2004, when Massachusetts approved same-sex marriages.

At 64, Sandi, after 44 years with Bobbi, advises, “Always remember what it was about the person you fell in love with.”

Bobbi, also 64, adds, “And keep telling her why you love her.”

Gannett News Service