Ruben Salazar Rachel Salazar Were Together For Eight Days

This is the story of a romance that began with a typo. In 2007, Rachel Salazar was living in Bangkok, Thailand, and Ruben Salazar was in Waco, Texas. Their email addresses were nearly identical. One morning, Ruben checked his email, and he found a note intended for someone else. "I discovered it said RP Salazar followed by two numbers," he says. "I figured, 'Hey, my email is the same exact thing without the numbers, so they probably sent it to the wrong person."

Ruben, 39, noticed that this other RP Salazar was in Bangkok, so when he forwarded the email, he added his own little message. "Something to the effect of 'Hi, Rachel, it seems as if this message came to me instead of you. I'm in Waco, Texas, U.S.A. Have a great day. P.S. How's the weather there in Bangkok?'" Rachel, 44, is originally from the Philippines but was living in Thailand at the time. For her, that first email exchange on Jan. 10, 2007, started it. "Then every conversation that we had right from the get-go was just natural," she says.

Ruben was excited that here was a person who was halfway around the world, but he could still tell her things. "It's kind of like sending a letter in a bottle," he explains. He happened to hover his mouse over Rachel's name in an email, and her picture popped up. "I was like, 'Wow, she's really beautiful! How can I make this picture bigger?' " he says, laughing.