Between India and Indiana, Finding Love

July 12, 2004 -- Rupa Goswami's parents are from India, where to be 36 and single isn't something to be proud of. But by urban American standards, Rupa is no spinster. Raised in the United States, she is dedicated to her impressive career.

"I got my dream job, which was to be a U.S. attorney in Los Angeles," she told ABC News. "So I wasn't going to let anything get in the way of doing this job."

An arranged marriage was out of the question, but that didn't stop Rupa's mother Shila from worrying.

Rupa remembers how her mother once went through all the clothes in her closet, and afterwards proclaimed: "Oh, there's nothing sexy in here. We need to buy you some sexy clothes."

"She'd give me dating advice, which I thought was really hilarious because my mother had an arranged marriage, and of course has never been on a single date in her entire life," Rupa said. "Her biggest advice was 'Don't sound smart.' "

Shila says she put her faith in the gods, visiting many temples. "There is no god left at Indian temples that I didn't go," she said. "Everywhere I went, and I said this is the last prayer I'm doing. Please give me that."

Then, as if right out of a Bollywood movie, her prayers were answered. Rupa met Tim Searight, a fellow U.S. attorney in her Los Angeles office.

But had the gods misunderstood? Tim was fair-haired, blue-eyed and not from India, but Indiana.

Searight said, "We were literally and truly born on the opposite sides of the world. If you were to look at the map, you would see they're directly on the opposite sides of the world."

Come Together

At first, Rupa wasn't interested in him "at all," and she was very concerned about having an office romance.

They were also of two different religions. Tim was baptized in the Presbyterian church. "My parents then took me to the Methodist church in Indiana," he said. "And then I started attending an Episcopalian church."