"If you'd told me six months ago I'd be doing this, I'd have said you were nuts."

This is James talking.

James is 48, a West Palm Beach businessman who just returned from an eight-day trip to the Ukraine.

While there, he proposed to a woman he met a few days before.

That's why he thinks some folks might doubt his sanity. But that's not the reason he doesn't want his real name used, he says.

He just doesn't want this relationship scrutinized. He has enough to deal with, planning his new life.

James found his future bride, Oksana Sluhar, through Marianna's Marriage Agency. She's 29, a teacher and mother of a 10-year-old son, Sergey.

Sluhar speaks little English, but that didn't stop her from telling James, who lifts weights, he has a stunning body. And it didn't stop James from falling in love.

One of the lines she wrote him in a letter captured his heart: A woman's strength is her weakness.

"I think women have been sold a bill of goods with women's lib," James says. "They have all these issues -- complexes. They think they have to be like men, strong and assertive. I like to be a man. I like her to be a woman."

To James, that means he'll make the decisions, with her input, of course. She can work or stay home. Her choice. But work can't outrank home and family.

Though twice engaged before Sluhar, James has never married. When a friend showed him the picture-filled catalog, James thought he'd give it a try. His friend, who received the unsolicited catalog in the mail, was taken aback.

"He said, `You're crazy. You don't know the women, you don't speak the language.'"

But James thinks he's ready, not just for marriage, but for parenthood. Though many of the women don't have children, James fell for a woman who does.

"At this point, I've done everything I've wanted to do," he says. "But I feel like I'm missing something. I don't want to go to bars anymore. I think I'm ready to be a husband and a father."

James is personable, articulate and, at 5 feet 6, he's chiseled from weightlifting. Sluhar is slender and blond with a winsome smile.

During their initial meeting, they spent 40 minutes getting to know each other with a translator's help.

James talked about his love of family and his love of skydiving and working out. Sluhar talked about her son and family.

While there, James met a dozen women, then narrowed his list to four. He shared a meal with each. Then, favoring Sluhar, he met her parents. Then he bought a diamond ring and, at a picnic, as the translator discreetly took a break, he proposed.

Back on American soil, he has concerns, of course.

"It's hard to communicate," he says. "That will be the biggest challenge. I don't know if she'll be happy or overwhelmed. I don't know her enough to get into her head and into her feelings."

James is paying for Sluhar's English lessons so she'll be more fluent when she arrives. James thinks that won't be until fall. Then he hopes they spend the next three months together. If all goes well, they'll marry.

"It's almost an old-fashioned life I envision," he says. "The wife is home and happy to be there."