Welcome to

Fall is here, hear the yell, back to school, ring the bell,

brandy shoes, walking blues, climb the fence, books and pens,

I can tell that we are going to be friends.

Welcome to strangers, from KCRW's Independent Producer Project and from StoryCentral.org.

My name is Leah Tao. And a couple weeks ago, I went to visit a young artist couple.

They live in a carriage house that feels a bit like a country cabin, you know, with low ceilings and

crooked floors and cool stuff all over the walls. And the first thing you see is a robot in the

yard from a music video that he directed. She makes her own letter press books and video art,

and they seem a lot like any other 28, 29-year-old artist couple that you find in this town. But a few things

about them are quite different from your average night 20s L.A. hipsters. First of all, they got

married when they were just 20 and 21, which is already unusual in Hipsterville. But not only

that, their marriage was arranged by their parents,

which is very common, of course, in some cultures,

but pretty rare among white Americans who've grown up on cul-de-sacs in Pasadena and New Jersey.

And they were married in Korea by the Reverend Sun Yung Moon

because Andrew and Aquina were born into the Unification Church,

which is also known by many people as the Moonies,

although the followers themselves don't like that term too much.

Reverend Moon started the church in Korea in the 1950s, and it gained quite a following in the

U.S. in the 70s and early 80s.

The thing most people know about the church is that its members are married in these mass

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