On a day a lot like this one, in Santa Barbara, Calif., in 1984, the love deities gave me my marching orders: "You Will Introduce Rande To Glen." The words arrived in my mind loud and clear, and hit with lightning-bolt force, as if it were my sworn karmic duty to make sure this man and this woman met. Unfortunately, my best friend was hardly in the mood for romance. Rande had just lost her husband to cancer and was struggling with full-time work and a demanding 4-year-old son. Besides, she lived in Portland.

I'd met Glen late in 1980 when his company re-roofed the Santa Barbara villa I was renting. He was the athletic, sensitive sort, both intense and shy. I had known Rande since the mid-'70s when, still in college, we both had managed to win Mademoiselle Magazine's Guest Editor contest. They had flown us and a dozen other winners to New York, put us up in Sylvia Plath's infamous Barbizon Hotel for Women, and given us ersatz "jobs" at the magazine, much to the annoyance of the real editors, who had real work to do. To this day, Rande says that the moment she saw me she knew we'd be best friends for life. Split souls, she calls us. But then, she has the gift of prescience. Indeed, we held remarkable things in common. We were both part French and part Scottish. We both had two sisters, no brothers, and were raised during the Surfer Girl era in Southern California, Rande in Malibu, me in Manhattan Beach, where our pale Celtic skin did nothing but bubble and peel. Neither of us was ever cool. Both of our fathers were distant, favoring one of our sisters, not us, and, therefore, both of us deeply longed for romantic love.

Rande saw all this from the beginning; I, on the other hand, only had a gift for recognizing other people's talent, and saw in this thin, painfully unassertive young woman a true genius for clothing design and a French style of fashion sketching that rivaled any Parisian illustrator's. In fact, Mademoiselle swiftly shipped all 14 Guest Editors to Paris (presumably to get us out of the real editors' coiffures) for a tour of the best couture houses of France. From Kenzo to Sonya Rikel, we traipsed through design studios en masse like the herd of ungainly post-adolescents we were, with the exception of Rande, who wore red lipstick when the rest of us weren't even shaving our legs. Rande never stopped gazing and sketching, such was her devotion to her art (she almost expired of heatstroke when the air conditioning gave out on our flight home while she was wearing every stitch of clothing she'd brought in order to make room in her luggage for two priceless Louis Icart illustrations she'd found at a Left Bank flea market).

When Rande married she moved with her husband, Rudy, to Eugene. Until their son, Elijah, was born, she was the fashion illustrator for Kaufman's apparel store in Eugene. After Rudy died, Rande took a job in Portland designing for Nike, which is where she was when Glen called her

When I first told Glen about Rande he reacted with classic male logic: "But she doesn't live here." Then he proceeded to have three dreams in a row of "a pretty woman with blond curly hair." I showed him a photo of Rande and he blanched.

"That's her," he breathed.

Anderson, left, is relaxed before the wedding ceremony while best man Cesar Cordoro, center, and friend Don Austin have already started dancing.

He would have been on a plane to Portland the next weekend if Rande hadn't given him the coldus shoudleris extremis.

"What the hell do you want from me?" were her exact words, though most who love Rande couldn't imagine such a greeting from her.

As it turns out, Rande had had her own prophetic dream a few months earlier, though she didn't make the connection when Glen called.

"I had a dream about a man Glen's height and with broad shoulders like his. It was so real, and there was such love between us! The message was that I'd be with this man the rest of my life."

During that first historic phone call, Glen talked to Rande in a tone normally reserved for animals with a leg stuck in a trap. He explained that he just wanted to meet her.

"Maybe it would be good for you to get out a little," he offered and asked her to think about it. He said he'd call back on Thursday.

After Rande hung up she realized how rude she'd been.

"If he does call back I'll go out with him," she told herself, "but he won't."

He did. And the date was made.

"I was confused and scared when I picked him up at the airport," Rande recalls. "Glen had told me he had a beard, but the first five men off the plane had beards! 'What has Jessica gotten me into this time!' I thought."

When she finally met Glen he just seemed like a regular guy, except that he was mumbling something. Then he handed her the zipper head to his pants! His zipper had broken on the plane and he didn't know what to do.

"I, of course, thought, 'Oh, great, Jessica's sent me a pervert. And NOW I'm letting him get in my car with me!' "

Ever practical, Glen was thinking, "She's a clothing designer - she can fix anything."

Despite this dubious debut, Glen valiantly took Rande out to dinner, then dancing.

"When he asked me to dance he held out his hand," Rande says. "As soon as I touched him, I knew."

They communicated via phone and letter for several months. Then Rande was laid off at Nike. She moved back to LA to live with her parents, and soon took Elijah to visit Glen in Santa Barbara.

Rande feeds Glen a piece of their wedding cake, a traditional ending to a very long and nontraditional courtship.

A few months later, Rande's grandmother moved into a nursing home and her house in Burlington in Skagit County became vacant. Her parents offered Rande the house so she'd have a place to stay and could keep tabs on her grandmother just up the street.

"I talked with Glen and he said he'd move up with me."

By January of 1985 they moved in. That summer, my Santa Barbara boyfriend and I moved to Bainbridge Island. Then Rande and Glen moved there, too, so we could all be together.

During those first few months, Glen had a vivid dream in which Rudy came to him and told him he was supposed to take care of Elijah. Glen had never even seen a photo of Rudy, "but the man he described was Rudy," Rande insists. "Definitely."

Around that time, Rudy also came to Rande in a dream and told her it was OK for her to be with Glen. "It was a casual conversation in a cafeteria!" Rande laughs now. "I remember saying, 'You're dead! How can you be talking to me?' But he was. It was him."

Things were not all kisses and Cheerios. Glen was dealing with being a divorced father with two kids, Jesse and Missy, back in California whom he missed terribly. Finally, he decided to move back to California. In retrospect, it was part of his adjustment process.

"It hurt," Rande adds, "because I knew we were supposed to be together."

"Once I got down there, I realized I was supposed to be with Rande and Elijah. But it also felt uncomfortable. And it took me a while to realize that that discomfort was my own misunderstanding. I just had to adjust."

They wrote each other frequently and after four months, Glen moved back to Bainbridge.

"That time I knew I'd stay."

Three years later they bought a fixer-upper farmhouse on the island.

In most love stories, this would have been the logical time to get married.

"But we didn't," Rande says quietly. "For financial reasons."

In the wake of his father's death, Elijah could receive monthly Social Security checks as long as his mother remained unmarried.

Meanwhile, along the way, Glen's son Jesse had come from California to live with them.

This photo was taken 15 years ago on a vacation cruise in Hawaii.

Between raising their sons, Glen's child-support payments for Missy, and their new mortgage, they needed the Social Security money. Marriage was out of the question. Meanwhile, Rande's jobs in the clothing industry were becoming unbearable. Even in Seattle, it's a cutthroat business, and there were layoffs arriving on every change in the economic wind. It was no place for a compassionate heart like Rande's, so she decided to become an art teacher and to go back to school at Seattle Pacific University to earn her teacher's certificate. The Social Security checks helped her to do it.

For the next two years Rande was overwhelmed with schoolwork, housework and child care. The subject of marriage would come up every once in a while, only to be shot down, always due to financial problems. "I called it the Curse of Rudy," Rande says. "It was very frustrating."

"I really thought the reason was finances back then," Glen adds, "but in retrospect, it was more a matter of commitment. I didn't want to be married again until I knew that the future would be what I thought it should be. The truth is that everything was fine all along; I just had to realize it. I had to change, not our relationship. I had to be at peace with myself . . . I had to somehow come to that openness where I could say I loved her and feel it, from my heart. It me took 10 years, that's all."

Rande completed work on her bachelor's degree and teacher's certificate in 1992 and began teaching art at North Kitsap High School in Poulsbo. In 1994 she decided to earn her masters degree from the University of Portland. At her graduation, in June of 1997, Glen gave Rande a blue sapphire engagement ring.

"I was just starting to open up," he says now. "Truly open up. I was starting to be capable of having a real relationship. I was more there."

"How did I feel?" Rande asks, "Choked up. It meant a lot."

"At that point," Glen says, "I wanted to get married."

Still, there was no wedding date.

In the summer of 1998, Rande had to have a hysterectomy.

"She was in bad shape and I was in bad shape," Glen says, "and I was no help to her at all. I realized afterwards just how thoughtless, how self-absorbed I'd been. I just could not help. I had nothing to give, and she was really in rough shape. I didn't deal with it very well. On an emotional level, I think I thought she was going to die.

"I almost did with the care I got!" Rande jokes now.

"And that's what made me realize that I had to change," Glen counters quietly. "I thought, 'It is not right that I'm like this.' "

"I wanted to leave him then," Rande adds. "There was nothing there for me. It was a bad time for both of us."

"I had to start changing," Glen said. "And that's what I did."

He started working "inside" as he puts it. Meanwhile, Rande started working on making herself stronger and less dependent.

One of the great sources of strength for both Rande and Glen is geographical: They both passionately love Montana. During Glen's first marriage he bought a ranch and moved his family there, but his ex-wife hated the place. Still a roofing contractor, Glen was on a job there in 1993 when he found a lovely property overlooking Canyon Ferry Lake and the Elkhorn Mountains in a remote area outside of Helena called Confederate Gulch. That summer, on their annual Montana vacation, Glen took Rande there. She was beside herself with wonder.

"Glen, is there any possible way we could buy this?" she asked.

"Well," Glen replied, "we already did."

They recently completed work on a one-room cabin where they now stay in summer, and they have plans to build a house nearby where they intend to retire. "When we're there," says Glen, "it's like going home."

Working privately with a spiritual teacher, Glen changed a lot over the next two years, just as he said he would.

"I stopped being afraid," he explains, "which is where peace comes from. Finally, I could live in the moment, and that allowed me to accept whatever happened."

Including in a marriage. Jesse was employed and living on his own. Elijah had blossomed into a straight-A scholar at the University of Washington.

It was finally time. Together, Rande and Glen decided to get married. The date was set for Aug. 12, 2000, two days after Elijah's birthday and one day after mine.

"That way, we can celebrate all three dates together every year!" Rande explains.

Now residents of Kingston, they planned to have their wedding at home. They worked like slaves to transform their front yard into a miracle of summer roses and sitting areas. Rande made all the decorations as well as her own glorious dress and those of her four bridesmaids. She even hand-decorated each piece of plastic ware with metallic dots of green and gold. A gifted chef, Elijah oversaw hors d'oeuvres and supper menu, all served on huge ceramic platters Rande had thrown and painted. Former students played classical flute music for the processional, and Glen, a talented jazz pianist, arranged for his musician pals to provide the dance music. It was a celebration of elegant creativity that would have done Martha proud.

But the best part was the way Rande looked at Glen when he repeated his vows to her. Never had I seen him look at her with that kind of love in his eyes. Rande quite literally glowed in his gaze. Whatever desperado walls had kept him removed from her for 17 long years now lay a smoking rubble at her satin-sandaled feet. She had waited him out, loving him and loving him and loving him, while he flailed and twisted his way out of his own demons, and she, and love, had finally won.

The only question left was the fate of their honeymoon cabin. The whole state of Montana was on fire last summer. Devastating wildfires were heading for the cabin. A secret scheme to have Helena friends decorate the cabin for them had to be scrapped; state troopers had blocked all roads in. Still, Rande's psychic sources assured her that the cabin would survive, and, in the end, it did.

The Seattle Westin rose to the occasion when people heard of the couple's honeymoon plight, and upgraded them to the Presidential Suite for their wedding night, chocolate-dipped strawberries and champagne at the ready.

"It's big enough to have had the whole reception in here!" Rande squealed. "The Space Needle is right outside our window and Hillary and Bill slept in this bed when they were here!!"

The newlyweds were thrilled.

They ordered breakfast in their room the next morning. When room service called back to double-check Rande's tea order, the voice in the phone said: "Mrs. Anderson?"

And Rande virtually sang back: "YES!!!!!!!"

Jessica Maxwell is the author of "Femme d'Adventure" from Seal Press, "I Don't Know Why I Swallowed the Fly" from Sasquatch Books, and "Driving Myself Crazy: Misadventures of a Novice Golfer" from Bantam Books. She lives in Eugene, Ore.