My ex-husband had a sister the same age as my younger sister, and for a while through high school they were close friends. I knew the ex (let's call him The Engineer) from the time I was fourteen or so, though he didn't really know me as anything other than the sister of a friend of his sister's. But everybody knew whom The Engineer was when he was in high school.

The Engineer founded an ecology club in high school that applied for and got state funds and did actual clean ups and awareness campaigns in the school district. They sponsored large Earth Day activities, and brought a local polluter to the attention of authorities. The Engineer was (at the time) the youngest person ever named to a planning commission in our state. He was always in the papers, and it was hard to go to our high school and not know who he was.

It wasn't until we were both in college that The Engineer noticed me, though. I was working part-time at a local bank to earn money while going to college. He banked there. I was coming off a really bad five year relationship at the time (yes, I dated the same guy from when I was fourteen until I was nineteen, but that's a nightmare for another entry), and The Engineer's long term girlfriend of several years had just broken up with him by telling him that she was engaged to be married to someone else.

He liked what he saw through the bars at the bank counter (yes, banks still had barred counters in those days) and got my number from his sister to ask me out. Within two weeks of our first date, we were talking about getting married.

His being Jewish was pretty much a non-issue, except for my father (who wisely never said a peep to me about it, but evidently spoke plenty to my mother about it). As things fell out, he became a non-practicing Jew, and I never embraced any religious beliefs, so the conflicts that eventually developed in our marriage never really stemmed from the different religious backgrounds we came from.

All of which is a long explanation to a short comment.