"I looked up and said, 'Who is that guy?' " she remembers. "That guy" was Beckette, a normally quiet Naval Academy grad who approached her, got the conversation rolling, took her on the dance floor and finished the evening running around the city with the friend of the bride.

His said his first impression of her was that she was "very fun, very smart and very beautiful."

It might have ended there. She lived in Chicago; he lived in Florida.

But it was only the beginning.

"A lot of our courtship was jet-setting," said Ward, who worked for the National Collegiate Athletic Association. They caught up with each other in Newport, R.I., and Savannah, Ga., and in New Orleans, New York and Ireland.

During their dating, she moved to Indianapolis. He moved to naval submarine bases and ended up in Connecticut and eventually Hawai'i.

"It just was fun," Ward said of making it work by meeting up in different cities whenever they could. "People complain about long-distance relationships, but ours was fun."

He said they brought out the best in each other, with her excitement balancing out his calm.

"I don't know if there's a secret" to surviving long-distance romance, he said. "I think you have to communicate."

About a year ago, she followed him out here, knowing where the relationship was headed.

Last October at the Navy Birthday Ball, they booked a room with an ocean view at the Hilton Hawaiian Village, and as they stood out on their lanai, he proposed.

She was ready.

They wed Feb. 18 in a traditional ceremony at downtown Honolulu's Cathedral of Our Lady of Peace, and as a surprise to their guests, a bagpiper led them out of the church.

Then at the reception at the Sheraton Moana Surfrider in Waikiki, they surprised their guests again with a choreographed first dance to Harry Connick Jr.'s rendition of "It Had to Be You," a dance for which the couple took lessons.

Nearly a month into their marriage, the 30-year-old groom, a lieutenant commander and engineering officer on a submarine, is preparing for a six-month deployment. The bride, 31, will stay in Kane'ohe. She works with the athletics department at Hawai'i Pacific University.

Some of the same patience they learned during their courtship will pull them through the separation, Beckette said. "We'll communicate as much as we can."

And when he returns, they'll return to their newlywed status.

"I've never met anyone who was so honest and grounded and kind," the bride said. "He's just so real."