Getting to Know Elizabeth Kucinich

night's presidential debate had all the careful hedging, non-statements, and awkward humor that seems to characterize most early-stage sparring. Viewers who made it to the end, however, were thrown a bone during a post-debate interview of long-shot Democratic candidate Dennis Kucinich: a glimpse of his wife Elizabeth, a 30-year-old British humanitarian. How did the Ohio congressman—a twice-divorced grown-up version of Alfalfa from The Little Rascals with no legitimate shot at the White House—manage to snatch up a woman half his age and a half-foot taller? It certainly wasn't their lengthy courtship.

Kucinich proposed to Harper (then an assistant at the American Monetary Institute) at the Albuquerque home of actress Shirley MacLaine, just two weeks after the couple began swapping e-mails in 2005. As unlikely as it may seem, both parties contend it was love at first sight. "I just knew, and Dennis just knew, and that's it," Harper says. "And it's not like I'm some ditsy young thing and he's an old fogey. He has the wisdom of an ancient and the energy of youth." Well played, Dennis, well played.