Strangers on a train

Trainee teacher Megan Smith and engineer Dominic Iemma made a connection during their morning commute to work. Almost four years later, the pair are happily married and making beautiful music together. By Josephine Brouard.

It was just another grey winter’s morning when Megan Smith, a young student teacher, boarded the 7.22am train headed for Glen Waverley in the south-eastern suburbs of Melbourne. As she adjusted the woollen scarf around her neck, Megan ticked off a mental checklist of the things she would need for her classes that day. She had recently finished three years of university, where she’d studied teaching, with majors in piano and harpsichord. Now she was doing her final student-teacher round, sharing her love of music with a classroom of primary-school students. Megan smiled to herself as she thought of some of the kids in her classes, but her reverie was suddenly interrupted when a dark, broodingly handsome stranger in a beanie and overcoat boarded the train. 

Megan was struck by the stranger’s composure and all thoughts of music classes flew out of her head. “He was dark haired, handsome and seemed aloof: I thought he looked like a mafioso and I was intrigued,” she recalls. “My curiosity was piqued, but he looked a bit older than me – I was pretty sure he’d be married.”

For the ensuing 40 minutes, until the train reached Megan’s destination, the student teacher daydreamed about the fellow sitting opposite her in the train’s front carriage. She wondered who he was; what he did for a living; whether he played music; what kind of music he listened to; and, most importantly, whether she would ever see him again. Thoughts rushed through her brain about all the movies she’d seen of people meeting on trains, then never crossing paths again. Briefly, she imagined herself as Julie Delpy meeting Ethan Hawke, as per one of her all-time favourite films, Before Sunrise. When the time came for her stop, Megan took a last look over her shoulder and made a silent prayer: “Please… please let him be on the train again tomorrow.”

Miraculously, the dark-haired stranger was on the platform for the 7.22am train the following day, and once again sat down in the front left-hand seat of the carriage. “I noticed her, too,” remembers Dominic Iemma. “I noticed she was new on the train and I liked her hair.”

Megan, meanwhile, continued to daydream about the handsome stranger sitting opposite her. Being inherently impulsive, she concocted plans to strike up a conversation with him, but it was tricky and she felt abnormally shy. A couple of days passed and she noticed that her fellow commuter seemed to like sitting in the same place. She also noticed that no-one dared to take ‘his’ seat. No-one, that is, except Megan, who positioned herself in the stranger’s seat the next morning. The beanie-clad commuter boarded the train soon afterwards and, noticing his spot was taken, gave Megan a sideways glance and promptly sat on the opposite side of the carriage. Megan was crestfallen: how was she going to find out more about this handsome stranger if he didn’t sit close by?

The next day, ‘Train Boy’, as Megan had dubbed him, sat down in his usual spot, and Megan plonked herself within chatting distance. As the train pulled away, she told herself this would be ‘the day’ and, mustering all the courage she could, made eye contact, smiled and said, “Hello”. “I don’t remember what happened next,” says Dominic, “but I do remember that she was very easy to talk to. We started with pleasantries about where we were going and why. She kept referring to ‘her kids’ and at first I thought she might be married – though she seemed a bit young – but then it became obvious that she was talking about the students at the school where she taught.”

In many ways they were an unlikely pair. Megan came from a Tasmanian family of Presbyterian music lovers; Dominic was a Catholic, a Sydney Swans supporter and a graduate of the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT), who’d lived in the Victorian capital most of his life. Megan, says Dominic, was the first girl to pique his interest sufficiently to make him seriously consider asking her out. He noticed his new acquaintance smiled a lot and seemed enthusiastic about everything. “I liked the fact that she was so passionate about teaching and she loved her students,” he says. “I could imagine her being a great teacher.” He never suspected that his new train buddy suffered from a debilitating condition – something Megan refers to as her “invisible illness”. 

“When Dominic met me, he didn’t know I was recovering from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome [see Crippling condition, page 103], which I’d contracted after a secondary infection,” she recalls. “I’d been in and out of hospital all through my university years, and my first teaching rounds were a complete disaster because of it. Even today I have to be careful not to exhaust myself, and to balance work and study with plenty of pampering and rest.

“Anyway, after some weeks of catching the train, I decided to buy a car and drive to work – essentially because it would be less tiring – but it crossed my mind that getting a car would mean no more chats with Train Boy,” says Megan. “We knew a lot more about each other by then, and I honestly liked everything I heard. He enjoyed his work in research and development, and he seemed to get on famously with his mum, with whom he lived.”

Train Boy, meanwhile, was plucking up the courage to ask Megan for a date. “I decided to ask her out on our last train trip together, just two stations before she got out,” he remembers. “That way, if she said no, there would only be a short period of embarrassment.” He laughs now at the recollection. “But she got in first, suggesting we exchange contact details and go out some time. I, of course, said yes.”

Megan admits she was pretty nervous about proposing the two of them meet away from their familiar railway carriage. “My heart was thumping the day of our last train ride,” she recalls, “but when I saw Dominic in his overcoat and beanie, I also felt excitement. It was pretty hard to concentrate on our conversation: Dominic was rambling on about the weekend footy and all I could think about was how was I going to get his phone number. Finally I just blurted out that I’d really enjoyed our conversations and I’d like them to continue, then I asked if he’d like to swap mobile phone numbers. Dominic seemed agreeable, so we exchanged numbers and email addresses. That’s when we told each other our names,” Megan laughs. “It only took four weeks!”

Dominic phoned that evening and invited Megan out the very next night. “I planned our date carefully: movies and dinner. I chose a chick flick, Hugh Grant in About a Boy. We laughed and talked a lot all evening, and parted with a kiss at the end of the night,” he recalls. “I was pretty clear that I wanted to see Megan again.” This was a big deal for Dominic because, up until that point, he hadn’t been one to pursue lasting relationships. “My parents divorced when I was sixteen and that upset me greatly,” he explains. “It was going to take someone special to make me sit up and take notice.”

As Dominic and Megan began dating regularly, she learned first-hand about the depth of feeling that runs in Mediterranean families. She also began a gradual acclimatisation to another culture. “Greeting people in Dominic’s family is… interesting,” she says. “Where I come from, you only kiss elderly people hello and goodbye, but in Dominic’s family everyone kisses and hugs all the time.”

Another thing that took a while to get used to was Dominic’s family’s preoccupation with fine food – and lots of it. “It’s not polite to decline food or have smaller portions,” Megan explains.

Dominic, in turn, has learned from Megan. “I’ve always been impressed by Megan’s commitment to her Christian faith and her level of involvement in her community,” he says. “As a result of being with Megan, I’ve become more of a practising Christian.”

Partly because of their faith, and also because they admit they are plain old fashioned, the couple decided not to ‘shack up’ together. However, they knew they were serious about each other and, after a solo five-week trip around Europe in late 2004 and early 2005, Megan returned to a marriage proposal, which was accompanied by a beautiful, princess-cut, blue-sapphire-and-diamond engagement ring. Dominic hadn’t rushed things: his proposal came almost two-and-a-half years after their first date. The wedding date was set for 17 September 2005, in Melbourne. Megan would be almost 26 years old when she walked down the aisle; Dominic, 32.

Dominic was excited but nervous on his wedding day. “I wouldn’t have got married, though, if I didn’t think Megan and I stood a good chance of lasting the distance,” he asserts. Fifteen months on, the young husband is honest enough to admit that his marriage requires ongoing emotional maintenance. “Neither of us is perfect,” he says. “I go very quiet when I’m grumpy and I drive Megan crazy with my fussiness about food. She, on the other hand, can be a bit too untidy for me. I’m usually the one picking her stuff up off the floor.”

Megan laughingly agrees with Dominic’s assessment. “I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to cook for him as well as his mother did, but I’ll keep trying,” she chuckles. She says Dominic has had to come to terms with her Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and he’s learned to recognise when his wife needs ‘time out’.

And Dominic has caught the music bug from his bride. When he’s not tinkering around the house, he can be found practising chords at Megan’s piano. Megan is teaching her husband to play and he relishes the opportunity to give his engineer’s brain a rest. After just six months of lessons, he has three pieces under his belt and hopes one day to make beautiful music with his wife. “The house is always filled with music,” Megan’s protégé enthuses. “I’m forever grateful I met my beautiful wife on the train.”

“People always say love will find you when you least expect it,” says Megan. “Our story proves that you never know where or when you’re going to meet ‘the one’. He might be just around the corner or…” she pauses, eyes shining, “on the next train.”

 

Words: Josephine Brouard. Photography: Andrew Lehmann. Hair & Make-up: Ruth Sebire.