An "Older Woman," Stefanie is five months older than Todd. She was born a Navy brat in Corpus Christi, Texas, but grew up in Duluth, Minnesota. She has a double major in Russian and History from Washington University in St. Louis, and a double minor in Political Science and Geology. (None of which she uses professionally today!)

Stefanie spent the summer of 1989 bicycling across the then-Soviet Union, and entered the University of Petrozavodsk for a semester at the end of the bike tour. She also wrote an occasional newspaper column for one of the Petrozavodsk papers while she was there. She only spent a few days in Moscow, but she did get to know her way around Leningrad pretty well.

Since moving to Vermont, she's worked part-time as an announcer with the local public radio station. She also went back to school to get her Masters in Internet Strategy Management, and is now working full time with Athena Consulting—an Internet design and strategy business she launched with two of her former classmates.

Stefanie considers herself a committed environmentalist, an unconventional free spirit, and a political liberal-to-moderate. She loves organic gardening, traveling just about anyplace, sappy movies, classical music and old jazz standards, tamarack trees, the color yellow, and pomegranates.

Todd is an only-child (though not spoiled, really!) and was born in Lewisburg, PA, just a few weeks after Apollo 11's successful mission. It is unclear if this has any connection to his interest in astronomy and science fiction. The Pritsky household spent 17 years in Perrysburg, OH, just outside of Toledo (home of the Mud Hens baseball team and where "Saturday night is like being nowhere at all").

One reason Stefanie and Todd get along so well is that they both have a predilection for studying things that have no bearing on their careers: Todd also majored in Russian/Soviet Studies, as well as Philosophy, at Colby College. Well, attending the Moscow Institute of Steel and Alloys in 1990 did make for some interesting resumer fodder when Todd was looking for work in the stagnant Vermont economy after graduation. Eventually he got a job as computer graphic illustrator for a teeny telecommunications training company called Hill Associates in the Burlington area. Todd eventually moved on from drawing technical illustrations to teaching classes about what all the boxes and lines mean, and now ten years later he's in charge of Hill's e-learning department, delivering courses online.

Todd loves red meat and red wine, thinks tofu is pretty good with barbeque or spicy sauce, and believes broccoli is the only vegetable worth his time. He'll devour anything with blueberries or strawberries. To work off all the junk he eats, Todd enjoys riding his bike over the hills around Fletcher, playing volleyball, softball, and ultimate frisbee. He also loves to sail and play with Cairo, the family dog. In his lazier moments, Todd will watch DVDs, read books, or play games on his laptop or Palm Pilot. Todd's favorite piece of music is Beethoven's 9th symphony, but he also loves heavy metal, other forms of rock, and New Age airy-fairy stuff, and he can occasionally get into jazz.

Stefanie was working as a writer and webhead at ADC Telecommunications in Minneapolis at the time, and was sent to a series of technical courses for job training. These courses were taught by Hill Associates, the company Todd has worked at for over a decade. No, he never taught any of her classes, but several of her instructors kept telling her about this really cool coworker of theirs who was about her age and also studied Russian.

Stef's favorite instructor, Steve Shepard, decided to push us together and gave us each other's email. (Thanks, Steve! We owe you big time!) And that was that. We emailed daily for four months before Todd got a teaching assignment in Minneapolis and we finally met in person.

Stef wasn't too sure about Todd at first...his boundless energy and Jim Carrey impersonation almost scared her off, but she came around pretty quickly when she realized how much she did like his other unique traits.

We did the long distance thing for nine months and then Stefanie packed up her apartment, loaded the dog in the passenger seat of the moving van, and relocated to Fletcher, Vermont to be with Todd.

The rest, as they say, is history!

October 2nd, 2001. It was a full moon, and also a rare palindromic day (if you write it the right way): 10022001. Yes, we're silly people who are easily wowed by things like this!

Stefanie was having a rough day...something about a difficult client who was changing their mind about what they wanted from their website. Todd announced he was taking her out to a nice dinner to try to cheer her up, and on the way into Burlington we detoured by a little park near his office. We stopped there to talk. Todd pushed Stefanie on the swings for a bit, and then we walked up the hill to sit on a bench and watch the moon rise. And all of a sudden there was a ring and The Question! Obviously the answer was yes, or this whole website wouldn't exist...

And it worked. He wanted to cheer her up and he sure did!