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Dream come true

Despite growing up on opposite sides of the world Rafael Nazario and Laura Courtney were destined to meet and fall in love, one way or another. By Laura Venuto.

When most people say they married the person of their dreams, it’s just a figure of speech. But for Rafael Nazario and Laura Courtney it’s actually a statement of fact. As it happened, their very first encounter took place in a dream. Raf, a single father of three children, had just relocated to Sydney from the US. He had separated from his wife of six and a half years, hadn’t dated in two and, in his own words, had “grown a little weary of love”. But when he fell asleep on an otherwise regular Monday night, he had the most wonderful dream of his life.

“I had this really vivid dream that I had met a woman who I had been introduced to, and it was just this great dream. But it was the feeling I woke up with; this fabulous feeling like, ‘Oh, it’s all going to be great.’ I have never woken up with such a serene feeling from a dream before,” he says.

You can imagine Raf’s surprise when just a few hours later a friend called, wanting to set him up on a date. “I said, ‘It’s so amazing that you would call me because I just had this incredible dream.’ And my friend said, ‘Well, what did she look like?’

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I told him she had light brown/blondish hair, she was maybe 40, wore black-rimmed glasses and was a teacher. My friend said: ‘Well, she doesn’t wear glasses, I don’t think she’s a teacher and her hair’s more red…” But, still feeling buzzy from the dream, Raf agreed to the date anyway. 

On the other side of Sydney, Laura received a phone call from one of her childhood friends, wanting to set her up on the same date. But, still recovering from a “bad internet dating experience”, Laura had almost reached the point of giving up on dating. “I felt as if I needed a break.

I was kind of over it all. After a few serious relationships, by the time you’re in your late thirties you’ve got baggage and it’s hard to stay positive and buoyant like you are when you’re in your twenties. The bounce-back gets harder. So I thought, ‘You know what, I’m going to give this one last shot, and if I don’t get married, that’s okay; I can see a life unfolding for myself that I’ll be happy with. But I’m going to go for it, for at least a year or two longer, and then put it to rest.’ At some point you’ve got to just resolve it one way or the other, or it can consume you. So I said: ‘Yeah sure, set it up.’”

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