By Jae-Ha Kim
Chicago Sun-Times
February 20, 2000
Bob Goldsmith and Maia Radnev will be husband and wife in a couple months.
A year ago, they were strangers living 5,300 miles apart.
Bob met Maia online last July. Both were subscribers to a matchmaking service. She wrote him from Romania.
At first, he thought it was a joke.
“The service tells you where the person is writing from and how many miles away they are from you, and I thought it was a mistake when I saw that she lived in Bucharest,” says Bob, 40. “But her response to my ad sounded so sincere that I had to write her back immediately, but I didn’t think much would happen. It’s not like we even lived in the same country.”
Over the next few months, the two grew closer. They were e-mailing each other four times a day and growing more attracted.
They decided to take a chance and meet in September on neutral ground: Paris.
Asked whether he was at all apprehensive about taking a transatlantic flight to meet a woman, Bob says, “Yes, I was a little nervous at first. But then my dad and best friend told me that it’s better to go and have five lousy days in Paris than to wonder about it for the rest of my life. And when I thought about it that way, I knew that I had to go and meet her.”
His flight arrived in Paris first. So he waited for Maia, 32, at the gate.
She walked right by him.
“She didn’t see me,” he says, laughing. “I ended up catching up with her at the customs line. She was looking pretty frantic by that point.”
He was pleased to find out that Maia spoke fluent English (as well as French and Hebrew), and was shamed into learning some Romanian.
As for the “lousy days” theory, he didn’t have to worry about that. The couple clicked immediately. They also fell in love.
Back home, they continued to correspond and made plans to celebrate Bob’s birthday in November in Chicago.
“It was very sad when she went home, especially with the prospect of celebrating the Millennium alone. I asked her to come again to celebrate the New Year in Chicago and with about 7000 people around us at the Chicago Hyatt Regency Hotel, I asked her to marry me. She said, `Yes.’
Earlier this month, Bob traveled to Romania to meet Maia’s family.
“I think that some people might think that we moved really quickly,” he says. “But I was always one of those people who never wanted to have a long, drawn out engagement. I knew that when I met the right woman, it would happen quick.
“When we were in Paris, I wasn’t thinking about marriage then. But after being away from her for a couple months and then seeing her again in Chicago, I realized that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her.”
She will move here next month to prepare for their April 15th wedding.
