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January 17, 2003/Shevat 14 5763, Vol. 55, No. 21
'Star-crossed' couple meets through Jewish News personals
ALISA SLOAN
Special Sections Editor
Although we met through an ad in the Jewish News, that's really only a small part of the tale," says Sharon Rendelman of her marriage to husband Michael.
Rendelman, then Sharon Roth, had placed a personal ad in the Jewish News "just for kicks." She had been on a fairly long hiatus from dating, and her first few experiences getting back in the game were what she calls "bad dates."
She even had friends fixing her up with single men in other cities, but to no avail.
"I had good friends trying to fix me up with a doctor friend of theirs in Tucson, and I was hoping for a local option," she explains.
Meanwhile, Michael Rendelman decided to place an ad at the encouragement of a friend. Michael, who often bemoaned the difficulties he had meeting eligible single women, placed the ad in an effort to prove to the friend that no good could come of it.
Soon after, he met Sharon.
Their paths were electronically crossed by a service through the Jewish News personals called the "In-Sync" questionnaire, which matches couples based on their answers to probing questions. Sharon was sent Michael's profile and she noticed that they answered every question exactly the same.
She sent him an e-mail that read: "I don't quite know if I believe that a computer can pick your mate, but if you are less of a cynic than I am, please read my profile and drop a note if you are interested in chatting."
Michael responded with: "Forgive me if it sounds sappy, but I read your profile, and you sound like a dream come true."
Despite the similarities, there was a catch, remembers Sharon. "Michael called me at work, and we had our first phone conversation the next day. When he called me he heard our receptionist say, 'Shalom, Chanen Preschool.' And thus the first question he asked me was, 'Where exactly is it that you work? What was that they said when they answered the phone?' "
Sharon was convinced that she was going to be "tracked down by a wacko who calls me a dream come true, finds out where I work and..." Her imagination was running wild.
She composed herself and replied, "I'm the director of a Jewish preschool. They said 'Shalom.' "
"Which preschool?" he asked her.
Sharon took a deep breath. "The Chanen Preschool; it's at Temple Beth Israel."
"Really?" Michael asked. "I think that's where by business partner has his son."
Later, Michael grilled his business partner for information about the preschool director. Was she good dating material?
Meanwhile, when school let out, Sharon was awaiting the arrival of the business partner's wife so she could ask her about Michael.
Both parties gave a "thumbs up," says Sharon, and said, "You guys are perfect for each other. If we had known you were both looking, we would have set you up ourselves."
Sharon and Michael's first date was in October 2001 at a coffee shop, and it brought to light a series of unusual experiences they had "shared" while growing up in New York.
"We are both former New Yorkers and were starved for the sarcastic wittiness that surfaces in conversations with other members from what Michael calls the 'home planet,' " says Sharon.
Among other things, they discussed jobs they had held in the past.
"Michael began to tell me about a job he had as a roller rink DJ when he was a senior in high school," she recalls. "I joked that when I was in the sixth grade my friends and I used to go roller skating every weekend. He told me about the place where he was a DJ and a problem they had on opening night with the floor. I gasped. That was Hot Skates in Lynbrook."
While Michael was an 18-year-old high school senior working as a DJ, Sharon was a 12-year-old sixth grader who visited the very same roller rink with her girlfriends.
And there was more.
They also attended the same summer camps (at one, Camp Camelot, they were both assistant directors, though at campuses 3,000 miles apart, in California and Pennsylvania). At another camp, Camp Chipinaw in Swan Lake, N.Y., Sharon had bunked with Michael's sister in 1982.
Though it took many years for them to meet, their courtship was a whirlwind, and it was apparently Sharon's mother who "proposed."
"My parents came to visit in December, and we took a day trip to Nogales for some bric-a-brac," Sharon recalls. "Michael bought a cigar, which sent my father drooling. Dad loves an occasional cigar, but mom is very anti-smoking."
Her father lit the cigar, which displeased her mother. Later that night, at dinner with Michael's parents, her father apologized, and in a stage whisper her mother said, "Forget it, no more smoking - but you can have another cigar at their wedding."
Sharon was "mortified" since she and Michael had not talked about marriage, but then the floodgates opened, and everything from diamond cuts to location was open for discussion.
On a trip to New York City in January, Michael proposed. In a coffee shop.
"I wanted to take Michael to Chinatown, as we spend much time in Phoenix complaining about the lack of good N.Y.-style Chinese food," remembers Sharon. "Michael kept suggesting that I might be happier going someplace nice, quiet, out of the way, romantic. I couldn't believe he was turning down Chinese."
They wound up in a busy, enormous, loud Chinese restaurant, not romantic at all, "but the food was good," says Sharon.
After dinner, they walked through Little Italy where Michael suggested they stop at one of the many intimate coffee shops, but Sharon insisted on pressing on. She wasn't in the mood for coffee.
Finally, after more walking, when Little Italy's romantic ambience was well behind them, Michael insisted they stop at the very next place that served coffee.
The very next place was a dimly-lit spot in Union Square, with a bold neon sign that garishly flashed the words "coffee bar" on andoff. They sat down next to a couple on a first date that was going horribly wrong, and Michael waited until the couple left to pop the question. The room was so dark and distracting that Sharon hadn't noticed as he reached into his pocket and pulled out a ring box.
She was "speechless."
"I had no idea that Michael had a ring, or that he intended to propose, (or) that the romantic coffee places he kept pointing me toward had nothing to do with coffee," she says.
Says Sharon, "The rabbi who married us called us star-crossed lovers as we stood under the chuppah. And that's so true."
Sharon and Michael were married Oct. 12, 2002, at Congregation Sons of Israel in Woodmere, N.Y., by Rabbi Bruce Ginsburg. Y
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