I t began with a "virtual" wink.
That's how, in early July, "xxGreatCatch4Uxx" of Novi met "burnie2" of San Diego -- with the help of the online dating service match.com.
Seven weeks later? They're engaged to be married.
But Elke Wilkerson -- she's "xxGreatCatch4Uxx"-- and Mitch Yow have never met. At least, not in person.
That happens for the first time around 3:30 p.m today at Metro Airport.
If you think these are headstrong kids rushing into things, well, she's 59, and he's 53.
Elke recently beat breast cancer, and has raised two kids -- now 16 and 24 -- alone after her husband died suddenly 16 years ago.
Mitch, originally from Benton Harbor, has five grown daughters he's very close to, and is just a couple years out of a 25-year relationship that he describes as "not a bad marriage," but one that lacked the emotional resonance he's seeking.
With Elke, he's found it.
The two moved quickly from e-mails to phone calls to video conferencing on helloworld.com, where they could see and hear each other in real time.
"We have been communicating four to five hours a day, live, for two months," Elke says, her voice still colored by a musical German accent. (She moved here in 1977.)
"I've met his family live," she adds. "I know all his facial expressions, his body language. So it's not like he's a stranger to me by any means."
Mitch, who's a Realtor, had been on match.com all of two days when Elke first made contact.
He admits his first reaction was, "Why is this woman winking at me from Michigan?" when his profile specifically said he was only interested in people within 25 miles of San Diego.
But the smile in her online photo (above) seduced him -- "a big, open- mouthed smile like a laugh," he says, "which told me she didn't take herself too seriously."
What she'd written suggested an honesty and a spirituality he found compelling.
Two days after her wink, Mitch took his profile offline. Why talk to anyone else when he was pretty sure he'd found "The One"? He proposed on July 23. Elke accepted two days later.
"I can't remember being this happy," she says. "I just can't remember."
Bedazzled by events, they're even kicking around a book proposal on their romance.
Elke's daughter, Melanie, told Mitch in an e-mail that she was all for the marriage as long as he kept her mother laughing like she'd been the past couple months.
Elke's son, in San Diego as well, was a little skeptical -- until he and Mitch sat down a week ago and got to know one another.
Mitch's daughters, he says, are happy for him, but thrown by his plans for relocating.
Because Elke's daughter still has two years to go in high school here, they've decided Mitch will move to Novi for the interim.
After Melanie graduates, they'll all relocate to California.
"Here we haven't even met," Elke says, "and to have made this commitment? Can you appreciate the caliber of this man?"
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