Dream come true

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?’

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.’”

But in true ‘love hits you when you least expect it’ fashion, Laura put in only minimal effort for their date, and even considered cancelling. “The night we met I’d been at

a painting class all day and I was dirty, I had paint on my hands, I didn’t even bother getting dressed up – no make-up, nothing. It was almost as if I didn’t care anymore. I think a part of me had given up, which makes you unattached to an outcome, but also disinclined to ‘dress every day as if you are going to meet the love of your life’ – as Coco Chanel once said.”

But almost as soon as Laura met Raf she knew he was different from the cynical, disenchanted 40-year-olds she’d been used to dating. “He was cultured, he speaks six languages, knew about music, knew about art, he was a chef, a musician and he had kids. This was an unusual and exceptional person. And even if this didn’t turn into a relationship, I thought this was someone I wouldn’t mind having in my life.”

For Raf, their initial meeting was all the more charged: would Laura be anything like the woman he had dreamed about two nights earlier? “I didn’t want to scare her on our first date with, ‘Hi, I dreamt about you!’ says Raf with a big laugh. And while they certainly hit it off and agreed to meet again, Raf thought maybe he had taken the dream too literally after all.

They continued to see each other and over the coming weeks Raf couldn’t deny something was blossoming between them. Dream or no dream, there was a definite connection, and their mutual likes and dislikes, passions and interests were almost uncanny. As a jazz musician, Raf was particularly impressed by Laura’s knowledge of music. “During one of our first phone conversations, Laura was telling me what she thought of Ken Burns’ Jazz series and I was listening to her with my jaw agape. She was saying things I thought too, and I’ve never heard anybody – especially someone who’s not a musician – articulate, and I thought: ‘Oh my god, this girl! I’ve really got to check this out.’”

Three weeks later, Raf decided to tell Laura about the dream. “I said to her: ‘But in the dream, the woman wore black-rimmed glasses, and you don’t wear glasses.’ And she said, ‘Well, actually, I’ve just started wearing reading glasses at home.’ I asked her what colour and she replied, ‘They’re black.’” It also turned out Laura is a teacher – having taught meditation for 15 years – and her hair is light brown; she colours it to look more red.

But there were more surprises in store for the couple and despite growing up on opposite sides of the world, it seems they were destined to meet – sharing more than just the same taste in music and books. A month into the relationship, Raf visited Laura’s apartment for the first time. “When I walked into her place, I said, ‘Oh my god, this is so Helen – you have to meet Helen.” Raf was referring to his oldest and dearest friend in America – not only is Helen godmother to Raf’s elder daughter Viola, he even dedicated a cookbook that he wrote to her and her husband. But the name washed over Laura and she thought nothing more of it.

Soon after, Raf posted Laura a present. Excited by the romantic gesture, Laura admits she was a little disappointed when she unwrapped the present only to reveal the cookbook Raf had written. “I thought: ‘This isn’t about me; this is about you!’” she laughs. “So I put it to one side and about a month later I opened it to find a pasta recipe Raf had mentioned.” As she flicked through the pages, she stopped at an unusual drawing near the back. “It caught my eye because it was very familiar to me, both the drawing and the handwriting,” she says. On the drawing it said: ‘by Helen Bartlett and Courtney Valenti’.

At 10pm that night Raf’s phone rang. It was Laura. “She called me up and said, ‘You know in your cookbook where it says Helen Bartlett and Courtney Valenti?’ and I said, ‘Yeah that’s my friend Helen; the one I’ve been telling you about,’ and she paused and said, ‘I know Helen Bartlett – we were roommates and best friends in New York 20 years ago.’ I mean, what are the chances? That’s when I thought, ‘Okay, this is meant to be.’”

And the connections didn’t end there. They also discovered Raf’s best friend in Australia, David Moor, whom he’d been friends with for more than 20 years and had orchestrated Raf’s move to Sydney, is the oldest friend of Laura’s sister-in-law. “I told my sister-in-law I was seeing this guy called Raf and when I said he was a friend of David’s she squealed, ‘Oh, you mean Raf! Oh my god I’ve heard about Raf for the past 20 years!’ So it was almost as if, one way or another, through all these people, we were going to meet.”

Despite what increasingly looked like a match that was destined to be, there was one small thing to consider. Well, two small things, actually – Raf’s children [his elder daughter now lives in Mexico with her mother]. Friends had tried to set up Raf on dates over the years and he remembers one occasion when his 12-year-old daughter Olivia was less than pleased. “Some friends of mine that I’d invited to dinner brought a friend of theirs they were really keen on me meeting, and after they left we were taking the dishes to the kitchen and my daughter said, ‘Daddy, you’re not planning on going out with her, are you?’” That’s not to say Raf lets his children make the decisions about his love life, though. “For me as a parent, it didn’t come down to making sure it was the ‘right person’ for the kids, but rather seeing the chemistry, how they interacted and what the vibe was,” he says.

The chemistry between Laura and Raf's children couldn’t have been more natural, and they bonded almost instantly – not only did they welcome Laura with open arms, but for Laura, it was seeing Raf with his children that made her give in to her feelings for him. “I was actually still quite cagey up until this point because I’d had this disastrous internet thing happen. I sort of knew Raf was great, but I still had my ‘back doors’ to everything, just in case. But when I came to the house and saw how he was with his kids… I mean, the energy in the house, and their manners and how he was with them – it just said everything.

I said to myself: ‘This is who he is. This is the kind of man I want to be with.’ Looking back, that moment was what sealed the deal for me. And his kids were so beautiful. I was in love with his kids in 24 hours.”

Funnily enough, Raf’s children’s affection for Laura became most clear after the couple’s first big argument – it was Raf’s daughter, Olivia, who helped the couple ‘kiss and make up’. “We had a big argument, and Raf sent me home,” says Laura.  At this point, Raf interjects. “Well, she said: ‘That’s it; I’m leaving,’ and I said, ‘Oh, so you're leaving?’” So he picked up Laura’s bags and walked her to her car. “I was horrified,” says Laura. “But at the same time: finally, a man to stand up to me. It just made me love him,” she says.

But that didn’t stop them giving each other the silent treatment the next day.

“I was pretty upset and didn’t know when I’d be ready to talk to her,” says Raf. “But the next morning, Olivia, who had heard the argument, said to me, ‘Daddy, are you going to call Laura?’ And I said, ‘Well yeah, I’ll call her.’ And every half an hour, she’d ask me the same thing. Finally, about the third or fourth time she said, ‘Okay, well I’m going to play outside for a while…’ and she looked at me, put the phone down next to me and went outside!”

Needless to say, they did resolve their differences and soon found themselves living together, and, before long, planning a wedding. And that’s the refreshing thing about Laura and Raf. Despite the prophetic dream and all the fate-laden coincidences that brought them together, the couple are reassuringly down-to-earth about what it takes to stay together in the future: you have to work at it. “We really do want the relationship we have both dreamed of, and in order to have that, you need to be willing to go, ‘Okay, how do we make this better?’ says Raf.

For two people who have spent far more of their lives apart than they have together, and a family formed rather than created, you would never guess it. There is a comfortable ease that surrounds their interaction – as if they have spent many years growing into this level of comfort together. “It was all just such a natural turn of events and everything just lined up in the right way,” says Laura. “It’s a complete blessing; it really is. His children welcomed me with open arms and it hasn’t stopped. I'm really aware of how rare that is. Olivia wakes up in the morning and comes and gets into bed with us – it’s just so sweet. It’s instant family for me and I just love it.”

So with a relationship that certainly seems ‘meant to be’, do they believe in fate? “Absolutely; without a doubt,” says Raf, turning to Laura with a cheeky grin. “Well, that’s what I keep saying: you’re the woman of my dreams.”

Photography: Scott Hawkins. Hair & make-up: David Novak-Piper.

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