This story first appeared in the Star on Jan. 3, 1999.

Politics is what drives Jack Layton and Olivia Chow – and what brought them together.

The Toronto city councillors met 13 years ago when she was running for school trustee and he for city council, both of them for the New Democratic Party.

Layton, 48, grew up in Montreal and has a Ph.D. in political science. He teaches at the University of Toronto. Chow, 41, came to Canada in 1970 from Hong Kong and attended the Ontario College of Art and worked as a sculptor before getting involved in social activism and politics. She also teaches at George Brown College. The two live in downtown Toronto with Chow's mother and Layton's two children from a previous marriage.

JACK: It was 1985 that we first met. We'd known of each other before that, but the moment of first attraction was at an auction we were doing for a hospital, I was the auctioneer. It was for a largely Cantonese-speaking crowd, held at Village by the Grange, and Olivia was the translator.

I found myself doing this auction with this absolutely stunning, drop-dead gorgeous, amazing woman and realizing that she was also going to be running in the upcoming election. So we thought we should go and have lunch together, and talk about the campaign. We ended up campaigning together later, and smooching in the hallways of downtown Toronto apartment buildings.

It was definitely a love-at-first-sight situation, and we've had an absolutely wonderful, joyous life ever since.

We went on our first date about three weeks after auctioning. We had a couple of dates and it became pretty clear that we were very interested in each other, at which point she took off on a pre-arranged canoe trip with three other guys – we're all good friends. To make a long story short, she came back and we took off to a friend's cottage for the weekend and moved in together as soon as we came back.

Her mother was very skeptical about me in the beginning. I wasn't the race that she'd imagined her daughter hooking up with, and, as someone who already had children, I think that was a bit of an issue in her mind. I didn't speak Cantonese, I wasn't a doctor or a lawyer. I think it was mostly that I devoured every one of her recipes with such enthusiasm that I ate my way into her affections.

The first time I had dinner with Mrs. Chow, she had some of her Mahjongg buddies over, so I was definitely on display there. I devoured the food and, at the end, I asked how to say "thank you for the good food." Now, depending on the tone you use, you can give it a totally different meaning. So I said it, with much enthusiasm, and there was this shocked silence as everyone tried to figure out what I was trying to say. One lady fell off the couch she was laughing so hard, and Olivia was in stitches. I'd just said "thank you for the good sex" in a rather raw way. My faux pas broke the ice completely. We've been good buddies ever since.

My parents were in love with Olivia from the first second. In fact, my father had been in Hong Kong in 1970, which is the year Olivia came over here. He brought back to my mom, who is a master seamstress, one of those red, Chinese wedding dresses with the embroidery on it because he thought she'd love the embroidery. When I told mom that we were getting married, she said "I don't suppose there's any remote possibility that this dress would fit but let's just take it out and have a look at it." Of course, it fit. So the wedding dress came over from Hong Kong the same time Olivia did, she just didn't know who she was going to be wearing it with.

Aside from the passionate commitment on some very similar issues, the ones we've spent our lives' work on, we also enjoy each other's company socially and we have a lot of fun together. We're either in stitches or organizing something, those are the most common states of mind.

We enjoy the same kinds of recreation - physical kind of stuff, she introduced me to whitewater canoeing and I introduced her to long-distance cycling. We have a bicycle built for two, that was our wedding gift, and we go on trips all over the place with that. We try to do one of those types of holidays every year, away from the city and our cell phones. We don't think about work and we don't talk about it.

I love her wisdom, and her youthful enthusiasm. She's got really great values on the issues - justice for people and fairness, economic fairness, respect for rights, these things motivate both of us. She's a wonderful friend. I'm her biggest fan and I pretty much gush about her all the time.

The incredible good fortune is that we've ended up on the same council together. Every night when we come home, around 11, we'll discuss the issues as we sit at the kitchen table. We try to rule out getting into too many long discussions when we're going to bed, but it doesn't always work. Issues are always on the agenda, there's no time out from that. The marriage is built all around that, it sounds corny but it's our way of celebrating life - working a lot, trying to help build a more just, equitable and environmentally sound planet for the next generations.

OLIVIA: We were auctioning for Mount Sinai hospital at the Village by the Grange, it was late at night - 1985, I think. Jack and I knew each other from political work, but this was the first time we'd had a conversation. We talked about work, campaigns, philosophy, beliefs, religion.

You sort of know after a while, you're at that age - you're not 16 anymore - and you know the kind of person you want. I think we share similar goals in life, we know what we want and value - justice, fairness, love, be good to your neighbour – it's what motivates us. So to meet someone who has that motivation and the obsessive drive similar to mine was not easy. Remember, I dated to 28 before I met him so I had lots of choices.

It was completely coincidental, us living in the same co-op. We didn't quite live together, he was on the 10th floor, I was on the fifth floor with my mom. There were lots of elevator rides that I was sort of half awake, wondering what floor am I on? So, yes, we sort of lived together but technically my address was on the fifth floor.

We married in 1988, I think we did it because we wanted a big party. The ceremony was more a commitment to the city and a commitment to each other; it was very warm, very inspiring. We even raised funds for three charities - rather than sending us presents, we asked guests to send donations to certain places, if they wanted.

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Where we had the wedding, at Algonquin Island overlooking the lake and the city, was symbolic. Both of our ministers integrated their sermons, psalms and poetry into a commitment, a love for two persons and the community of friends and to the bigger community. We wanted to do it because we had different cultures at the wedding, and we wanted to represent the merging of the cultures – the more Western churchy thing, the Chinese bow to heaven and earth thing and then the tea, and then we had our gay friends talk about how same sex partners should be able to get married. We did that so our Chinese friends would be more knowledgeable to our other group of friends because they don't necessarily cross. In Jack's mind we had over 1,000 people there but I think we had 900. He tends to go over the top a bit.

We are both very religious in non-religious ways. We share spiritual values in our understanding of the universe and why we are here. We're influenced by the same philosophy and religious values, and politics is really a manifestation of what we believe in. Even if tomorrow we both left politics, that would not change. For us, that soul part, spiritual dimension, is the same.

We do have a bit of trouble co-ordinating our calendar - he never knows what I'm doing and I never know what he's doing and we often double-book. Last week, I had a party here and he had a party scheduled. here, too. So I bumped his elsewhere.

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