Alice Cukrowicz, a Grab-n-Go worker in South Dining Hall, has been married to Ervin Cukrowicz for 60 years and two months.

Today, after experiencing both the highs and lows of married life, including Ervin's battle with a stroke five years ago, the couple celebrates its 60th Valentine's Day as husband and wife. And they couldn't be happier, according to Alice, for they've been able to capture the essence of happiness throughout their years together.

Alice, the sparkling deity she is, knows exactly what that essence is: "You have to have trust, and you have to have love," she said. "You know, if you don't trust them, then you have problems. And be thoughtful of one another. Instead of always wanting someone to do it for you, do it for them."

In the game of love, such virtues are common pieces of the puzzle that is the foundation of a lasting relationship. But the simple fact remains: Can this foundation really be discovered? There are some people out there who probably feel the journey to find true love is a lost cause. Others, including Alice and Ervin, prove otherwise.

In fact, such a foundation could be found 20 years ago in a sandbox in Pocatello, Idaho, where a little boy named John Hatzenbuehler met a little girl named Stephanie Bernt. This is their story.

The two infants played with each other in the sandbox until they learned how to play basketball. Though the two kids lived in different parts of town and went to different schools until high school, they saw each other every day. They grew up as friends, and even throughout their teenage years when most kids abandon their childhood friends as they struggle through adolescence, they remained friends.

In August of 1996, though, John, who is now a resident advisor in Morrissey Hall, embarked on a journey into the Notre Dame vacuum. Stephanie took a similar journey, but her destination was different. In the end, they were apart.

But they both returned home to Idaho following their freshman year, where their lives would soon change forever. One night, John felt a chemistry with his long-time friend that may or may not have been there before. But at that moment, he decided Stephanie was his destiny. She was his one true thing. And he went after her.

"This is how he pursued me," said Stephanie with a giddy smile on her face. "He calls me up that night; I had gone on a date with somebody else. I come home and at one o'clock in the morning, there was this message on my phone to call him.

"So I called him thinking it was no big deal, and he proceeds to tell me how he feels about me, and I'm thinking, `Oh my God.' And then he comes down, like at 3 in the morning, and he kissed me. That was it. There was no talking, there was no date, there was nothing."

It was the act of a young romantic stripping himself of any protective skin and letting his feelings fall to the ground. It was a simple deed, and both John and Stephanie recognize this in retrospect.

"There didn't need to be all that other stuff," said John of the kiss that sealed his future. Stephanie finished his sentence: "Because we had known each other for 19 years."

A few months later, John and Stephanie had to say their good-byes again. Their long-distance relationship was in its initial stages, but the couple would learn to live apart, and in an ironic twist of a lover's fate, the distance would eventually bring them closer together.

But the couple still recognizes the difficulties in maintaining this type of relationship.

"The only reason [the long-distance relationship] worked is because we had 20 years under our belts before we started," said Stephanie. After John questioned how their relationship did work out, Stephanie replied: "It worked out because it was meant to be."

It was then that fate finally became a recognizable element in the John-Stephanie story. And at that point, John realized just how far their relationship had developed.

"If you get through a long-distance [relationship] you develop an unbelievable emotional attachment that you can't get every day. It's a different sort of thing," he said. "Every day you can have physical connection but sometimes that gets in the way. But this is all emotional. You have to be so trusting. You have to go a level above the normal relationship."

Throughout the past few years, the couple has never gone more than a month without seeing each other. If it's not fall, winter, spring or summer break, it's a weekend trip to South Bend or Utah (where Stephanie graduated college). That is, until this past summer, when John involved himself in a summer service project in Cleveland and Stephanie finished her degree at the University of Utah. For the first time since that fateful kiss at 3 a.m., the two found themselves apart for three months.

Then one day, Stephanie broke up with her man. The distance they had worked so well with for two years was tearing Stephanie apart inside, and she couldn't handle it. But as the doom of failure was in sight, John had an epiphany of love.

"It was after that point that I just couldn't handle that idea of breaking up," he said. " So I started entertaining ideas about getting engaged. One day, it just hit me. I really didn't consider being married right away, it's just engagement is a different level that you need for commitment. We basically needed this commitment from each other to basically survive … that summer. And then I got home for a month at the end of the summer and things just clicked. It was the best decision we ever made."

July 3, 1999, was the day John and Stephanie made the biggest commitment of their lives. And it will be July 3, 2000, when John and Stephanie will close the deal, say their "I do's and become husband and wife. But they insist this was not done on purpose. It was fate.

Now they have the daunting prospect of being the Hatzenbuehlers, a married couple. This, from a couple who lightheartedly made a promise to get married if both were single at 28, a la "My Best Friend's Wedding."

But John and Stephanie acknowledge the impossibility of having the perfect relationship, especially knowing the way their relationship has developed so far.

"Our relationship has been nothing but battles, not with each other, never with each other, but battles surrounding our relationship," said Stephanie. "Distance is just one element. Distance really sucks; to put it just how it is, it really sucks.

"It would have been easy to find some Joe-Schmoe," she added. "But the connection I have with him, he is not just this one guy that I find physically attractive and that I [have] this really great relationship with. It's more than that. Number one, he's my best friend by far, and that doesn't even describe it, really."

At this point, Stephanie turns to John: "You're more than a best friend, you're sort of a savior in some certain terms, and a guide, and somebody who … will always do the right thing."

And despite the fact that Stephanie and John love each other, they insist they are not a couple of love-sick kids. They understand what they are doing. And they aren't flinching a bit concerning their future together.

"I think the key to success [in marriage] is being best friends," said Stephanie. "I may do all these fun things, and who do I want to do them with? That's easy, [him]. That's the good thing about distance. We've learned to live apart [while] needing each other at the same time. So, when we're together, we're not in each other's face, and lovey-dovey. We know how to be Stephanie and John, which I think is very important. And together, we're just cool."

So are they the perfect fit for each other? They certainly seem to think so, and when someone sees them together, one sees two extremely attractive people who are at peace with being together.

"I can't think of anybody better," said John. "That's the key: If you think you can meet somebody better, then you're in the wrong relationship. But I don't think I could find, or want to find, anybody better. She's everything I ever hoped to want."

"He makes me the best person I could ever think to be, and that's why it was meant to be as well," said Stephanie. "I always had this vision of who I wanted to be and how I was going to get there, and he just made that possible for me."

Stephanie added: "All my weaknesses, he makes them strengths. It's sort of a completion. John makes me whole by himself, so that I am complete and he is complete and we just roll together. I don't have things that I'm missing that he has to be there for me to be a person."

And John as usual, finishes Stephanie's thought: "It's not like I couldn't live without her. I could still function, but it wouldn't be half as good if I didn't have someone to do it with."

Maybe, if health is on their sides, the Hatzenbuehler family-to-be like the Cukrowicz family, will celebrate a 60th wedding anniversary. Sixty years down the road, the lives they've shared for more than 20 years already will most likely be just as strongly intertwined.

"When all the lust and the hot steaminess is gone, I still always want to be with [him], no matter what," said Stephanie in a serious tone.

John had similar feelings. "If there's any one person I want to be with my entire life, it's her," he said.

But the clincher in this perfect love story is the following proclamation by Stephanie to John, which put their entire relationship, from the youthful friendship of yesteryear to the loving partnership of today, into a new light.

"You've sort of put a new spin on life partner," she said to her beau. "That's why I love you, because you are my life partner."

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