Love stories are as rare as a cold bottle of Dr. Pepper in Europe, even though Hollywood and its misguided unrealistic version of love would hope that we believe otherwise. I only know of two relationships that have gone the distance. My parents, who will celebrate 60 years this month and my friends Charles and Arne, who, against all odds, and for decades most of society, are celebrating 36 years together.

They met at a party in Manhattan, and through the smoke and over the mullets, they were taken with each other right from the start. One enchanted evening. Their own private cliché. They bought a loft in Tribeca in the late 1970’s, which then was the kind of place where drug deals on the corners were a common occurrence and there were just as many rats as people walking around at night. They had to haul up pipes, plumbing and floors. The Broadway play, “Rent,” – that was their life. The loft, like their love, has transformed over the years from something plain and acceptable to something rich and beautiful, a tapestry of memories they have made and the loves and tragedies they have shared. And like their life together, it is woven of dreams fulfilled and magical moments that still await their touch.

Charles and Arne are two parts that fit together: something that doesn’t happen often but, when it does, it’s the wildest experience to witness. I met them both a little over 20 years ago, and their love has come to be a sweet reflection of what is possible, it has stood to inspire me with a vision of hope and served as a benchmark for my relationships.

I have watched others lives intertwine and then unravel including my own, but theirs have harmoniously held together, like the perfect notes in a symphony, no matter what storm they are going through or crisis they are facing.

Charles understands that Arne, a world famous photographer, needs to be surrounded by dead animals. It looks like a taxidermy shop exploded in their Tribeca loft. You can’t go to the bathroom without dead animals watching you. Depending on Arne’s latest project, gallery-opening or photography book, the loft could be full 10 x 10 framed blow-ups of chewed up dog toys, the neighbors across the street, sock monkeys or the forensic heads of unsolved murdered victims, many who were the murdered girls of Juarez.

Arne understands that Charles, a creative director, and interior designer, needs to be surrounded by beauty, fine things and architecture books. He recognizes the need Charles has to go with me on zany spiritual adventures where we have bolted all over the world searching for mystical mysteries to solve. The only thing we lack is a van, some hip friends and a dog-named Scooby-Doo.

Like a car thrown in reverse, their relationship has had to move backward. These two men have already proven what traditional wedding vows can only hope, “in sickness and health, better or worse, richer or poorer.” They have comforted, honored, loved and cherished each other day in and day out for over 11,000 days.

Finally, Charles and Arne are planning a wedding and trying to decide what to do for the ceremony. I was thinking they should do something unconventional like Coney Island, or perhaps something simple at the justice of the peace’s office. While Charles and I were in Tibet, we met a nurse who informed us that she was married to the captain of a spaceship from the Pleiades star cluster. Obviously, she was on her own trip, but perhaps her husband could marry them. As a captain of a ship he would have the authority, which I think is a stellar idea. An interstellar idea.

But after everything they have been through, after all the prejudice they have faced and overcome, I have come to realize it is the spark of spirit within the individual soul that makes this sort of love possible at all. It is the inner uniqueness that makes life meaningful at each stage; that makes love a possibility at any moment, and that makes each moment susceptible and vulnerable. Love doesn’t answer to doctrine or dogmas, for there is no theory or system that can substitute for a life unlived, for a story undeveloped, for fate not faced, for a destiny not embraced, and for a love not known. For this reason, I hope that they marry at Yankee Stadium. Not only because of it’s significance to New York and New Yorkers, but because their relationship is just like baseball. When the bases are loaded, and it’s the bottom of the 9th the best player is brought out to bat one out of the park – just as the fans hold their breaths wondering if this feat can really happen. For their 36 years together, Charles and Arne are living proof of the miracle that love can be. Every time life has thrown them a curveball, they have managed to continually bat one out of the park, standing confidently together because, in the end, love is the victorious winner, because in the end, love always bats last.