How unlikely was this romance?
She was born in Britain in the '70s.
He was born in Fairbanks in the '50s.
She was a globe-trotting journalist in China.
He was a highway construction engineer in Alaska.
She was a published author, an authority on chess and fluent in Russian.
He was a Tourette's syndrome sufferer and fluent in profanity.
So how did Sarah Hurst, 34, and Jon Savage, 52, begin to fall in love six years ago while living 4,000 miles apart?
Through a global Internet dating service, of course -- which connected the two through cyberspace in an instant.
But not before Sarah, in Beijing, made the fateful decision to press a computer key and contact Jon, in Anchorage, having just examined a few promising details in his biographical sketch.
Like his expressed interest in reading, writing and lifelong learning. His desire to travel. His love of cooking and sharing a beer with friends. But most of all, his sense of humor and total lack of guile.
In the preliminary correspondence that ensued, Sarah says, she noted how Jon didn't try to hide or embellish the essential facts of his life. His job with the Department of Transportation. His challenges as a single parent. His four kids. His teenage son with autism.
Friends and family had warned her about the potential pitfalls and deceptions of Internet matchmaking. But almost immediately, Sarah says, she knew that Jon was "real." Three months later -- in the summer of 2001 -- she traveled to Alaska to meet him.
Part of the attraction back then, Sarah admits now, had been her preconceptions of a strong independent man in the wilderness of Alaska. But at least half that image began to fade the first evening when she checked into "one of the seediest hotels in Anchorage," a place on Fifth Avenue with broken floorboards and a jacuzzi in each room.
Jon later persuaded her to stay in his home, in spite of her English mother's concern that he still might be "an ax murderer." Later she sent her mom a semi-reassuring photo.
"I had a picture taken of me typing at a computer, saying, 'It's OK, Mom. It's safe.' And in the background he's holding an ax ..."
"She tries real hard," Jon says, "but she's not as funny as me."
The two quickly fell into a happy pattern of road trips and food fests and social outings. They became regular trivia competitors at the weekly pub quiz at Humpy's.
Jon moved on to a job as construction manager for the Alaska court system. Sarah found several freelance writing and consulting jobs -- lecturing BP employees on Azerbaijan (where she lived for a year), translating books from Russian to English, accepting a screenwriting assignment for a PBS documentary on Alaska.
She also enrolled in a playwriting course at UAA and wrote a funny and highly autobiographical play -- "Crossed Wires" -- about a love-starved 28-year-old writing her first novel in Beijing and an acerbic but good-hearted engineer in Anchorage who meet through an Internet dating service.
So far the play has received favorable reviews in staged readings in Anchorage and Chicago, and Sarah is looking for a producer.
Before its Christmas unveiling at Cyrano's Off Center Playhouse two years ago, Jon says, he hadn't read the play. He ended up wincing throughout the performance. Not because it wasn't any good.
"I was like, 'Oh, no! ...' Because it had all this stuff that was real."
In the audience review of the play that followed, some viewers said a few parts just weren't believable. But those were lifted nearly verbatim from their lives, Sarah says.
Now Jon is convinced that Sarah is bound for stardom -- as a screenwriter if not as a playwright.
"She's going to be famous one day, and I'm going to ride on her coattails," he says.
This month, when they got married in a small family ceremony at a friend's house, Jon and Sarah acknowledged each other's wishes in their vows -- with certain exceptions.
Said Jon: "I promise to love and cherish you, to make bean soup for you, to throw my clothes all over the floor, to play Sudoku with you and to make your life interesting till death do us part."
Said Sarah: "I promise to love and cherish you, to remind you to take your medicine, to beat you at Sudoku and pool, except on rare occasions, and to hurry up and get famous so that you can bask in the glory till death do us part."
