She hated it. It said: "Surfer Seeking Beach Babe."

Nevertheless, Steffany, a local girl who had never waxed a board or paid attention to the surf report, responded to his posting, asking him a few questions to try to figure out if he was a superficial surfer dude or something more on "her friend's" wavelength. She began asking things she really wanted to know herself, and Pruder was giving all the right answers.

"Instead of introducing him to my co-worker," Steffany said, "I decided to meet him myself."

Steffany, a veteran of blind dates, played it safe and agreed to a first date at Starbucks at Ward Centre.

"I'm not like a total romantic," said Steffany, a state environmental engineer. "I'm real practical. I don't believe in love at first sight. But with Curtis, the conversation was comfortable."

They clicked.

Four months of dating passed, and Steffany brought Pruder home to meet her family. Pruder hailed from Delaware, and her parents, from American Samoa, had never bonded with an East Coaster before.

Siala Steffany, Sina's mother, was opposed to the pairing at first. She said she had issues about her daughter, who had lived all her life in Hawai'i, marrying a Mainland outsider. (Later, she'd tell stories about it at the wedding reception that would making everyone laugh, but that's jumping ahead a bit.) Let's just say Pruder, who fell in love with both the surf and Sina Steffany, grew on his future mother-in-law.

"I was worried," Siala Steffany said of the second-youngest of her five children. "I thought she was never going to get married."

But the lovebirds took their time and dated for more than two years before getting engaged.

Pruder, who runs an advertising agency, taught Sina how to surf. Once, they ventured from their regular surf spot, White Plains at Barbers Point, to Turtle Bay on the North Shore, a trickier place to catch waves. Pruder sensed Sina was running into trouble, and he took off his surf leash to throw to her because he was going to tow her in. Instead of taking it, Sina took a wave instead and rode right past him. That's when he says he really knew he loved her.

They tied the knot March 21 at the Halekulani hotel under a light rain that everyone told them was a blessing. The bride is now Sina Pruder.

She just turned 38, and the groom just turned 40, a time in their lives when they said they were just mature enough to get started on a family and a future. So the timing was right when the bride learned she is expecting. She's about halfway through her pregnancy.

"We both have a lot of single friends our age still hoping to meet people," Curtis Pruder said. "The only thing I would say to them is: 'Don't give up.' "