I didn't meet the love of my life until I was well past the halfway point of the Biblical three score and 10, but once I did, we didn't waste any time.

Nicole and I were both 42 when we met, the survivors of bad first marriages. The only difference was that she had a couple of others in her lifeboat with her, a 12-year-old daughter and a 7-year-old son. She had the cutest French accent and she was both beautiful <em>and</em> brilliant. What she saw in me, I'll never know.

[caption id="attachment_69" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="My beautiful Nicole"]<img class="size-medium wp-image-69" src="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/DSCN0079-300x224.jpg" alt="My beautiful Nicole" width="300" height="224" />[/caption]

Amazingly, we were married 51 days after we met.

Even more amazingly, it worked. As of Nov. 2, 2009, we have been married and in love for 17 years. We raised those two children together and both of them have turned into wonderful young adults; one of them has even given us our first grandchild.

Life is good, so good in fact that it's better than I ever could have imagined. We're going to retire early, possibly as early as next year, and then ride off into the sunrise together. Yeah, into the sunrise. We're going to move east to be closer to our kids when they're in this country, so we'll have a whole different part of the country to explore.

It really doesn't matter where we live. Wherever she is, that's my home. I never dreamed that I could love someone as much as I love her, and I certainly never dared to hope that someone would love me as much as Nicole does.

She is not only my wife, not only my love and my closest compa