Amazing What You Can Find When You’re Not Looking: An Unlikely Love Story
Six years ago, Brad and Wanda D. were complete strangers. Today, they’re husband and wife.
Getting from there to here required remarkable serendipity, if not something more.
In early 2019, Wanda was about two years removed from the end of a 42-year marriage when she decided to resume the educational travel that had been a lifelong passion. Rather than travel solo, the retired school administrator planned a trip (not through Road Scholar) to Croatia along with several girlfriends.
Brad, meanwhile — also newly single — was intent on continuing his own lifelong habit of educational travel. Croatia was on his list of dream destinations, too, and seeing a Road Scholar offer inviting participants to travel as singles at no added coast, he set his sights on a departure date.
Back to Wanda, whose plans hit a rather big snag. Her daughter shared the wonderful news that she was pregnant. The baby was due to arrive right in the middle of Wanda’s Croatia journey. Determined to be present for the occasion, the grandmother-to-be reluctantly withdrew from the girlfriends’ adventure. However, not wanting to abandon the Croatia experience entirely, she searched for alternatives, and Road Scholar’s single-traveler offer caught her eye as well. She quickly enrolled for a departure – not, as it happens, the one Brad had in mind for himself, rather one that left a week earlier.
Ah, but…
Brad was alerted to the fact that his passport was about to expire, and he’d have to request an expedited one. He held off enrolling in the program until he had the passport in hand, then let Road Scholar know he was ready to go. Unfortunately, his original departure date had filled in the interim, and Road Scholar could only offer to put him on a waiting list. That was leaving too much to chance, so Brad decided to enroll in a program departing slightly earlier – the exact same one Wanda would be on.
Which is how two people embarked on unanticipated “Plan B” journeys that would change their lives in the best possible way.
A Walk, a Talk and a Spark
Brad and Wanda have an easy, comfortable way of finishing one another’s sentences in conversation, and together they share what happened next.
They arrived in Montenegro with other program participants to spend a few days there before venturing to Dubrovnik to continue their journey aboard ship. Their second night in Montenegro, they stopped for a glass of wine with other members of their group on the walk back to the hotel. A few of them began talking, and they all opened up about their personal stories — careers, relationships, divorces, family, interests — everything. For Wanda and Brad, it turned out to be sort of a chaperoned first date.
They felt an immediate connection. Brad expressed amazement: “I’m not that guy. I’m a pretty quiet, shy sort — a software engineer with the personality to match that.” But the spark was undeniable.
On to Dubrovnik
A few days later — on their first day in Dubrovnik — the group had free time to explore the city, so they all headed out to lunch. Suddenly the skies opened up. A torrential rain began to pour down, sending everyone scattering off to find shelter, and leaving Brad and Wanda alone under an awning.
The pair ducked down an alleyway and into a restaurant called the Marco Polo, where the owner gave them blankets and pulled over a heater to help them take the chill off the day. When they asked for a simple pizza, he insisted they have something Croatian instead, and he wowed them with a squid ink risotto, excellent wine and a postprandial glass of cherry brandy as Brad and Wanda sat chatting happily all through the afternoon.
From that point on, the two were inseparable. They seized the opportunity provided by daily interaction to become fast friends and learn more about one another’s lives. Of course, their group quickly figured out what was going on and teased them about it endlessly. Wanda, the older of the two, worried about their age gap, but Brad asked, “Are you having fun?” When she nodded, he said, “Then let’s just see what happens. “
What happened was, after the group concluded its memorable exploration of Croatia’s Dalmatian coast, Brad and Wanda returned to the states and the relationship continued to blossom, albeit from afar. Wanda was from Eugene, Oregon. Brad had made a “temporary” move from California to Tennessee 27 years earlier to be near family – his mother, who later passed away, and his brother and sister-in-law, who remained there. So now Brad and Wanda took up a long-distance relationship — but COVID quickly intervened and threatened to keep them unhappily apart. So Wanda took action. After making some quick arrangements for a house-sitter, she boarded a very empty plane and flew to Tennessee, where the couple blissfully rode out the early months of pandemic together.
The West Beckons
The days in Tennessee were wonderful, but Wanda was an Oregonian through and through, and couldn’t imagine staying in the Southeast permanently. Then the serendipity — Brad and Wanda credit something more — resumed, in the form of another pregnancy. Brad’s niece, living in Philadelphia, made the happy announcement and her parents decided to move there to be closer to their grandchild. Suddenly, Brad found himself no longer tied to family in Tennessee, and as a software engineer for an entertainment company, he was free to work remotely from anywhere.
Brad sold his house, and in May 2020 the couple packed up the car and headed for Oregon. Along the way, they stopped in the Grand Tetons and got married against the backdrop of that magnificent range, where it had snowed the day before but dawned sunny and seventy. A perfect day and a perfect place to be wed.
Today, Wanda and Brad reside in Beaverton, Ore., but continue to make educational travel (including a recent Road Scholar trip to the Galápagos) an integral part of their lives.
Reflecting on the improbable chain of events that brought — and kept — them together, the couple feel blessed by their great good fortune. “Neither of us were looking for anything,” they agree. “We were just doing the things we love, and somehow we came together and connected. You know, if you just keep doing what you’re passionate about, who knows? Sometimes you find a soul mate.”
Even setting aside their unexpected connection, the couple were delighted with their Road Scholar experience. They were particularly impressed with the local group leaders and experts, one of whom was a native of Dubrovnik who had to flee the Balkan wars as a child by boat, with his parents staying behind. He had given the Road Scholar participants a vivid, firsthand history lesson of the war that proved to be one of the highlights of the trip, and the group came to consider him a friend.
Several years after their initial journey, when Brad and Wanda returned as a married couple to Croatia, they reunited with the instructor and his daughter. They shared their happy story over lunch, just a block from the Marco Polo.