KOSCIUSKO — Robert and Tania McGuire can say as many couples do, “It was love at first sight.”

For them it was love across the miles via the Internet, he in Kosciusko and she in Ecuador.

No matter the miles, both said  it was  “A marriage made in heaven, and we were meant for each other.”

Both were single following marriages and both had been urged by friends to begin  dating.

Out of curiosity about on online dating websites, Robert said he logged onto to the site Latin American Cupid.

When he read Tania’s profile he was impressed. He replied and said he kept his fingers crossed that she would respond. “Her profile was sweet and she said she was a Christian and was interested in finding in a Christian man,” he said.

Thus began the long distance love affair which over the next few years would progress to marriage following daily emails, conversations, and a number of flights for Robert between the United States and Ecuador.

The courtship took place while he continued his daily job of delivering mail to Kosciusko residents and she with her job as an account manager, and in areas of marketing in Ecuador.

Robert said conversations were sometimes hard as her English was not too good. “It was real funny with her children in the background trying to help her interpret what I was saying,” he said.

When Robert arranged to take off 10 days from his job and go to Ecuador for the meeting, both experienced nervousness, they said, in anticipating their first meeting. That meeting did not go as envisioned.

Robert’s flight, his first outside the United States, was delayed in Atlanta and he arrived in Ecuador at 1 a.m. Upon arrival he expected Tania to greet him at the airport, but she had become ill and sent her two sons to meet him. They carried him to his hotel with the promise of Tania being able to see him the next morning.

Ecuador with its high altitude, higher than that of Denver he said, had its effect on the Mississippi visitor leaving him not feeling his best. Not being able to speak Spanish, he managed for a meal the next morning, and afterwards took his seat in the hotel lobby to wait for meeting Tania. “She was so much more beautiful than her pictures,” he said of the first meeting.

“I felt comfortable with him and knew from the first I loved him,” Tania said.

More nervousness for Robert came with meeting her parents and other family members. “I was welcomed with open arms and treated royally,” he said.

Upon his return home, the romance continued online.

In December, following his initial visit, he returned to Ecuador and on Christmas Eve at the home of her parents in Loja, Ecuador he proposed marriage. The following February, Tania made her first visit to Kosciusko to meet Robert’s parents, G.C. and Betty Lou McGuire (now deceased). After her return to Ecuador, they soon began going through the legalities required for marriage.

First of their two marriages  was the civil ceremony held on April 7, 2008. A week later on April 12, the marriage with family took place, followed by a week’s honeymoon spent in Esmeraldas, Ecuador.

Following the honeymoon, Robert returned home leaving his bride in Ecuador with plans of beginning the process of her immigration to Kosciusko. During this time he continued to make the flight to see her as she was not allowed to leave the country during her immigration process.

On Nov. 17, 2011, about three years following their marriage, the years of long distance communication ended when she was able to leave her native Ecuador and join her husband in Kosciusko.

Of the long process Tania said,  “Everything is possible because of God. The people of Kosciusko have been so good and have made me feel welcome and at home.”

And the couple lived happily ever after – at 325 Lucas Street in Kosciusko.

Robert has three children, two living in Philadelphia, PA,  and one in Jackson. Tania has a daughter living in Texas and two sons in Ecuador.