It's been a year since Joyce Bova did the one thing she thought she'd never do -- get married. Well, that's not quite true. She was engaged once, in the mid-1970s, to a charismatic Greek man who owned a chain of restaurants. But she called it off before long. He was possessive and jealous -- even of her previous boyfriends.

Mostly one previous boyfriend: Elvis. Bova met the King in 1969 while vacationing in Las Vegas and began a three-year relationship she would chronicle in a 1994 as-told-to tome called "Don't Ask for Forever: My Love Affair With Elvis -- A Washington Woman's Secret Years With Elvis Presley." That historic meeting between Elvis and Nixon? It was "actually an afterthought," says Bova, who was a staffer on the House Armed Services Committee at the time. "He was coming here to see me." Turns out Elvis had some apologizing to do for a fight he and Bova had during a Vegas liaison.

But this is not a story of loves past -- though there have been several, including a long-distance relationship with a Wall Street stockbroker that lasted 19 years. Even that can't compare, Bova says, to what she has now with a man named Mark Kameo, who was born in August 1977 -- the same month, she notes, that Elvis died.

When the Republicans took control of Congress in 1994, Bova lost her job on the Hill. She used the opportunity to turn a lifelong hobby into a business and opened a ballroom dance studio, the Dance Den. For years she and her identical twin, Janice, were together and happy. Neither had children, and both of Janice's marriages had ended in divorce.

"I never even really wanted to get married," Bova, 65, says, sitting in an Arlington cafe in a denim jacket embellished with tan suede fringe and glimmering studs. "I didn't think it was a role that I would be good at because relationships always seem to end."

A peripatetic life had made that the case for Kameo, too. The 32-year-old engineer's family had moved dozens of times before he reached fifth grade. When his father finally settled in North Carolina, he became an all-star defensive tackle on the high school football team but gave up a college scholarship to join the Green Berets. After six years in the military, Kameo grew "tired of getting shot at," so he left for civilian life.

In 2000 Kameo relocated to Washington, where his mother and stepfather lived. Visiting his parents one day, he was introduced to his stepfather's administrative assistant -- Janice -- and her sister, Joyce.

"Looking back on it, I think I was instantly attracted to Joyce. I've always been interested in the old Italian movies, the old Mafia movies, like 'The Godfather,' " he says, adding that she reminded him of that era.

Bova, single-minded and effusive, told Kameo that he had the build of a great dancer and that he should start taking lessons from her.

The 23-year-old signed up for six classes but was so nervous he almost didn't make it through the door. Janice spotted him lingering outside the building and pulled him inside. Within a year he was taking two classes a week, then three, sometimes pawning his possessions to pay for more. The dancing was fine, but the draw was Bova.

"I wanted to be there with her. . . . I lived for it all week. 'When's my next one? When's my next one?' " he remembers thinking. "She wore a certain perfume and I'd go home and her perfume would still be on my clothes."

Bova was ignorant of Kameo's crush, but she did become attached to the shy young man spending so much time at her studio. "I said, 'I want to adopt him!' " she recalls. "He was the sweetest, nicest guy."

Kameo eventually became Bova's star student, and then her dance partner for performances. They comforted each other through the deaths of his brother and her father. Still, Kameo never told Bova how he felt -- "I never thought I had a shot," he explains. "You know when somebody's out of your league, and I considered her out of my league."

But on Valentine's Day 2004, something changed. Bova got into a heated debate with a new male dancer and Kameo stepped in on her behalf, sending the other guy running.

"And I started to look at him differently -- he just seemed to grow up after that episode," she says. "He looked more mature."

After their next lesson they went to dinner at the Olive Garden, where she told Kameo she was having feelings for him. "And that's not a good thing," she remembers saying.

"Well, I've been feeling like that since I met you," he replied.

For a month they would talk on the phone every night until 2 or 3 a.m., as she rattled off all the reasons they couldn't date: Heads would turn, it wouldn't last, it would ruin their friendship, they were too different.

"I kept telling her, 'I'm not going anywhere. I'm not going to leave you. It's not going to be a short relationship,' " he recalls.

"Finally I said, 'Okay, I feel like one day one of us is going to be really hurt, and it'll probably be me,' but I can't resist him anymore," she says.

Three and a half years later Kameo, who's never wanted children and says the age difference "doesn't affect me at all," persuaded Bova to marry him. "I wanted to say that I married the person I loved the most," he says. "It's almost like she's oxygen to me. I need her or I get like a sick feeling in my stomach."

New Year's Eve 2008 -- after some hesitation on her part, the insistence of a prenuptial agreement on his -- they wed in a glittering event that included illuminated champagne glasses, disco lights and vases full of peacock feathers.

And it turns out marriage suits Joyce Bova more than she expected -- or at least this one does. "It's such a different feeling," she says. "I feel cared about. I feel safe."

Kameo, too, is still celebrating.

"Not many guys get to marry their fantasy woman. I got to marry mine," he says. "And she comes along with a twin."

Source Elvis Unlimited