Hello Cecil & Marianna:

I wanted to write this letter for all the men that are thinking of joining Marianna’s Marriage Agency.

Back in October of 2002 I was not happy with the type of woman that I was meeting in my home town of Las Vegas Nevada, I had joined a dating service and had been out with a few girls from work but none of the dates went any farther than the first one. They all seemed more interested in them selves and what I could do for them, not in me and how I felt; I just wanted to find someone to have a lifelong relationship with.

So in October I started looking through web sites and just by luck I came across yours. For some reason it struck me as honest, I read all the information you had and decided to give it a try.

I looked through all the photos and picked 20 that I thought looked like my type, it’s hard to tell much about the girls from the little bio they write.

I sent the list to Marianna and asked her a few questions about each of the girls, which she was happy to tell me and she also recommended 10 of the girls to write to.

Of the twenty that I had chosen one of them stood out that was Irina, so I was glad that when Marianna shortened my list to ten she was one of the ones left.

Through this whole process of picking which ladies to write to and trying to match the things we have in common, Cecil and Marianna were invaluable. They always answered my calls and whenever I e-mailed them they responded promptly, sometimes they didn’t tell me the things that I wanted to hear but they were quite honest.

I started writing the ladies and received a reply from all of them. I was vary happy to find that a couple of the ladies had turned me down, this helped lesson the fear that all the ladies would say whatever you wanted to hear just to get to the States.

The letters sounded very genuine and the ladies very real. They all asked good questions, none of them asked how much money you make and how big your house was or how much your car cost.

Out of all the letters Irina’s was the best, she wrote me letters that were a couple pages long and we seemed to have a lot in common. I continued to write to a couple of the other girls because as Cecil says you don’t want to travel that far to meet just one lady, what if the two of you just don’t like each other when you meet or you find one of the others that you have been writing to more interesting when you get there.

I booked my trip for the middle of February, and off I went. The plane trip was long but good and when I arrived in Lvov I was surprised to find that my luggage had made it also. After going through customs with no problems, I went into the reception area to find Vadim and translator.

They were waiting for me right by the door so it was no problem to find them. We got into a nice van for the ride to Chernivtsi While in the van I had asked a lot of questions about the woman I was to meet and how the process worked so by the time we arrived six hours later I already had some information of what was going to happen.

I had also formed a good relationship with my interpreter; he was to be my link with Irina and the other ladies I was going to meet. He with Vadim seemed like very nice people someone that likes what they do and wants to really make you feel welcome in their country.

The apartment I was staying in was very nice it was very clean and had all the comforts of home. In the morning there was to be a lady to come and make my breakfast, when she arrived I was surprised to find a very young and attractive woman. She made my breakfast, something different every morning and the food was very good. I wasn’t sure if I would like the food in the Ukraine so I brought along a bunch of health bars, which I never used except for a snack.

The first morning I was to meet the ladies that I had been writing to, this is also when I meet Sveta, she is Vadim wife a very nice lady she looks after the woman while Vadim takes care of the men. Neither one of them speak much English, but they understand almost everything you say, this is were your translator bridges the language gap. And I have to say he does a very good job. After a while you hardly know that you are taking through him you feel that you are having a normal conversation with the person you are talking to.

When it came time to meet the ladies he was very professional, knowing how to say certain things and what not to say. I asked all the ladies as many questions as I could think of, it is a difficult thing to do you really do get nervous and forget what you want to say. Luckily I wrote some of the questions down on paper before the meeting.

When I was done interviewing each woman I would talk to Sveta about them and ask her opinion, she was very helpful with knowing each girl in person.

Irina was the last woman I was to meet and I was not disappointed, she was even more beautiful than her pictures and I could feel that we had some attraction to each other. I want to say that all the woman that I meet were all pretty in their own way and they all looked just like the pictures I saw on the internet some looked better, but they were all real.

After talking for a few minutes we decided to go for dinner. Vadim took us to a very nice restaurant were we continued to grow closer to one another. After dinner we took Irina home and I said my good bye knowing that I had found my match and that we would be spending a lot of time together over the next week.

Later in the week I asked her to marry me and she accepted, I meet her parents and her lovely daughter Olga. The family doesn’t seem that different from mine and I think that we will get along very good together.

As for my experience I found it to be better than I could have expected all the people were very nice, the food was good I even had pizza and Mexican food that tasted just as good as I could get in the States. The town of Chernivtsi was just like a college town young people everywhere. It was cold when I was there so I didn’t do much sight seeing but the town looks like a very nice place to visit.

As for money I found that the dollar does go a long way buying things like food and flowers but something’s are just as expensive their as they are in the States.

When I left I felt vary sad to say good-bye to someone that I had grown so close to in such a short amount of time but I know that if we are really meant to be together than the wait won’t matter.

When I arrived home I finished filling out the paper work that Marianna had given me and sent it with the papers I brought back with me of Irina’s and sent them to her. She filled them out and sent them to the INS.

In closing all I can say is that the hardest part of this journey I’m taking is the waiting for her to come to America. The rest of the process has been taken care of by Marianna & Cecil and they have done an excellent job.

Thank you and good luck.

Robert