And Other Stories of Great Romantic Beginnings

People meet and fall in love in the strangest ways.

On a steamship voyage, Mark Twain met a man who showed him a small ivory portrait of his sister. One glance was all it took to convince Twain that he had found the woman of his dreams.

"I have read those absurd fairy tales in my time, but I never, never, never expected to be the hero of a romance in real life as unlooked for and unexpected as the wildest of them," Twain wrote in a Valentine's Day article in 1870 after he had tracked down, wooed and married "Livy" Langdon.

Twain was right. Love is often unlooked for and unexpected. It can be as sweet as a fairy tale . . . or as absurd as it was for my husband and me.

One of our first dates was a daylong ski trip in 1982 with friends to Hunter Mountain, N.Y., in a 1966 Volvo 122 -- a car that was long past its prime. On our way to the ski area, somewhere near Newburgh, N.Y., the car's hood flew open while we were cruising behind a truck. We discarded the dented and useless part on the shoulder of the New York State Thruway, and giggled our way back home through what turned out to be a blizzard. It was the most romantic day I'd ever spent.

We didn't ski that day and haven't tried to hit the slopes since. But the Volvo is still with us, having been driven, trucked and transported by train to eight different residences. It reminds me of how I fell in love with the man behind its wheel, in part because he helps me face the bizarre twists of life with a smile.

Lots of people have equally quirky stories to tell about how they embarked on the greatest romance of their lives. We spoke to nine couples, some well-known, some not. With Valentine's Day just two days away, we offer their stories.

David Lockington and Dylana Jenson

Of all the tales about great romantic meetings, love at first sight has to be the most cliched. But it is the simple truth for David Lockington, associate conductor of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, and his wife, concert violinist Dylana Jenson.

He was 26, a cellist with the Denver Symphony Orchestra in 1982, when Dylana, then 20, was hired as a guest soloist to perform the Beethoven Violin Concerto.

"At rehearsal, as soon as she walked in, I felt attracted to her," says David, a London native.

And what was it about him?

"His very large hand-knit sweater -- and his moccasins," Dylana says. "I thought, 'He looks so comfortable, I could marry him.' "

They flirted silently through the rehearsal, but didn't speak until after the concert the next day, which her mother attended.

"I kept sending my mother out to see if he was coming back to my dressing room," says Dylana. "He later said that he kept watching to see when my mother was leaving."

Finally, he decided to make his move, saying to a colleague he passed backstage: "Well, I'm off to propose."

They spent the next day at Denver's Celebrity Fun Center, a water theme park. But when Dylana suggested that she might stay in the city the next week, David rejected the idea. He was involved in a long-distance relationship with someone else. He told her to leave, even though it was "against intuition and what I wanted."

In the morning, she left a note in his mail slot at the symphony saying that she had decided to stay. A bold move, as affairs of the heart go, but she was confident.

"I was certain that he was absolutely in love with me," she says.

She was right. Two months later, they were engaged. Two

months after that, on Feb. 16, 1983, they were married. They now live in Mount Washington. It was almost the opposite of love at first sight for Donna Beth Joy Shapiro, who met her husband, Fred Shoken, in 1983, when she went with a friend to Baltimore's Commission for Historical and Architectural Preservation, where Fred worked at the time.

"I didn't find him too attractive," says the 35-year-old Charles Village resident, owner of the Old Waverly History Exchange & Tea Room. "He was sort of nondescript."

Fred, 38, who now works for Baltimore's Bureau of Transportation, also had a strong reaction to the first sighting of his future wife.

"Her appearance was weird," he says. At the time, she often wore her knee-length black hair braided and coiled under a dramatic piece of headgear. "You have to understand, she has 300 hats," he says.

On the surface, they were as different as two people can be -- he soft-spoken and shy, dressed in what she describes as perma-press shirts and orthopedic shoes, she a gale-force gust of personal style and frankness.

Which makes what happened next particularly odd. Three years after meeting Fred, while serving with him on the board of Baltimore Heritage, a historic-preservation organization, she had a dream about him. To save him the embarrassment, she won't disclose the details.

She woke deeply disturbed.

"I'm wondering, why him? It would be the same thing as having a dream about Ronald Reagan," she says. "At the next meeting, I started paying more attention."