"I noticed her right away but didn't have an interest in her," said Mr. Alexander, now 56 and a president and the chief financial officer of Amsoil, which makes synthetic motor oil.
The two continued to bump into each other over the course of the next several years, perhaps because their night-life habits and musical tastes were similarly eclectic (Bob Dylan, My Morning Jacket). But there seemed to be few other areas where they overlapped. Mr. Alexander is a steak-loving motorsports enthusiast with an adult daughter, and is relatively politically conservative. Ms. Nowak is more liberally inclined, has a strong interest in healthful eating, mindfulness and the importance of having a compassionate heart.
Mr. Alexander remembered one moment in 2012 in particular. "I had run into her at a nightclub, and we had had a brief conversation about our dating lives and how it's not very fulfilling, and it's very difficult to find someone you're compatible with and can see a future with," he said. "That sparked my interest."
It wasn't until the following year that a first date was arranged, one that Mr. Alexander said "wasn't wonderful." For one, she was younger than he had anticipated. "I didn't see that we had anything in common — or sufficient things in common — and I actually told her that."
Another relationship was not much of a priority for Mr. Alexander in the years that followed his divorce in 2009. "He was fine being single and not having a whole lot of oth er people to answer to," said his brother, Nicholas. "As time went on, I could sense a loneliness, a desire for companionship that he didn't have in his life."
Ms. Nowak wasn't particularly put off by the executive's judgment of their compatibility. "I just kind of accepted it," she said. She said she also told him in the course of that date in 2013 that she had an interest in another fellow.
Six months later, he heard that she was still single and sent her email that said, "Maybe our timing is better now, and let's try this again."
Over dinner in Duluth, they had a conversation that both remember as stimulating and revelatory. "I had an 'Aha!' moment, that just because she doesn't want to snowmobile or motorcycle doesn't mean that we're not compatible," Mr. Alexander said.
For her part, Ms. Nowak said, "the important things we were aligned on, such as the way we were both looking for someone who was kind and thoughtful and wanted to be in a relationship where you are mindful of the other person's thoughts and feelings and state of mind."
Soon Ms. Nowak and Mr. Alexander began seeing each other more often. On their first getaway weekend, to Minneapolis, they each said "I love you" for the first time, and in the warm glow of th eir new romance, Mr. Alexander made a joke about their on-again, off-again relationship, citing how their interest in each other had been stimulated by six-month gaps and perhaps they should keep it at that.
"That's when things fell apart," he said.
She tried to explain to Mr. Alexander how his offhand remark had triggered her most basic fears. "It's scary to fall in love, and all of the sudden you realize how easily the rug can get pulled out from under you," she said.
He tried to understand, but they packed up their romantic getaway, drove back to Duluth and broke up. "I was so torn," he said. "She explained what had happened, but I just needed time to process."
In March 2014, Ms. Nowak decamped to Scotland, visiting Insch, a village where some of her ancestors had lived, and contemplated how to move forward — alone.
"I felt numb and restless," she said. So she spent her time doing a little genealogy work and contemplating the impact her fatherless childhood had had on her ability to trust love, and trying to move beyond it. "I needed to work on this because I can't be a person who is going to sabotage a relationship just because I'm holding on to this old emotional baggage," she said.
About her father, Ms. Nowak said she came to recognize "it wasn't a choice that he left, but working through it with my therapist, it seems like when a parent leaves, regardless of the reason, those feelings of being left behind are there."
After she returned to Duluth in May 2014, she began sending emails to Mr. Alexander, just a few words to remind him that she was thinking of him. He'd respond, politely but curtly, she said. Then, about two months after they had broken up, he initiated a message. "He was opening that door a little wider, so it was really promising," she said.
About a month after that, the two agreed to get together for a drink.
"The minute I saw her again, I gave her a big kiss," Mr. Alexander said. "All the problems went away, and I knew we were going to make this work."
That October, they found an apartment in Duluth and moved in together. Last fall, Ms. Nowak left her job of 20 years to pursue her dream of writing poetry and short stories.
On New Year's Eve, they were engaged. "She's so kind, so caring, so gentle — those are qualities that I've never experienced to that degree before and that I find so refreshing, that have made me so in love with her," Mr. Alexander said. "If there are issues, we communicate about what they are and work through it."
On July 29, exac tly three years after their very first real date and on a perfect summer day, the couple married at their country house on Island Lake in Fredenberg Township, Minn.
There were 17 guests — all members of their immediate families — seated in two church pews set before an arbor draped in white roses. The groom's sister, the Rev. Jeanine E. Alexander, a United Methodist minister, led the ceremony. Midway through, the couple left the arbor to plant a tree that years earlier had sprouted in a pot on the patio of her Duluth townhouse. A wheelbarrow of dirt attended the planting, and the couple easily managed the maneuver, together, without besmirching their wedding clothes.
After the planting, they returned to the arbor to have their first kiss as spouses, and then thanked all of their guests, one by one, f or having attended their ceremony.
As the assemblage began drinking Champagne and eating chocolate-covered strawberries, Ms. Alexander was moved to say of her brother: "Now he has joy in his life. He seems so much happier, and she's brought that to him."
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