The year was 1964: Ronit Rinat, 18 years old from the city of Haifa in Northern Israel, was crowned as Israel's beauty queen and later became the second runner-up to Miss Universe. Ronit planned to be a teacher but somehow found herself in Israel’s beauty contest after following a friend that introduced her to a woman in charge of a modeling agency. After her photo [in which she was wearing] a bikini was published in a newspaper, Ronit was asked to leave the Teacher’s College where she worked.. This loss led her on the path of becoming a beauty queen and subsequently opening a way to a journey around the world.

Moti Peleg, a 17-year-old teenager, a romantic young man and a dreamer, was drawn to her striking green-blue eyes on a magazine front cover. He then said to himself, “This woman will someday be mine.”

“Something happened to me because of those eyes” says Moti in an overseas phone interview. “I always knew it was against all odds, but I was a dreamer with much patience. I’m usually a person that makes his dreams come true.” His soul was magnetized by her green-blue eyes that for many years became for him a lighthouse of hope.

Moti is 61 now. He was born in Poland and immigrated to Israel at age three. He is the first born son to Holocaust surviving parents. He came to America following his academic dream to become a psychologist, is also known, as an Israeli singing artist. He loves to sing, and compose songs. As a son of Holocaust survivors whose entire family was annihilated in the Holocaust, it was extremely important for him to succeed in life, as a token for the family that did not survive.

While a student he supported himself by performing in Israeli clubs and Jewish community centers in the metropolitan New York area.

In his imagination, he kept envisioning Ronit seated in the front row in one of his shows, listening to his songs and falling madly in love with him. But that did not happen. He married an American woman that he met in Israel who became the mother of his two children. After 23 years of marriage, Moti got divorced. “Though I loved her and respected her, I felt something was missing in my relationship” says Moti. During all these years, Dr. Peleg ran a psychological center in Ridgewood, NJ, had several short-term relationships and did not give up his dream about bonding with Ronit.

The phone call that changed Ronit’s life

One day Ronit received a phone call from a stranger – a call that changed her life. The caller relayed to her that he knew of a man that had been dreaming about her for over 40 years. She was tempted to hang up the phone, yet something kept her on the line. It was the realization that the name of the caller was identical to the name of a close friend of hers from the past. She then asked about the romantic admirer and was told that his name was Dr. Moti Peleg. Ronit felt she got a sign from the universe that must be paid attention to. So she gave permission to the caller to give her number to Dr. Peleg, the man that kept her image in his heart for many years.

Later, when consulting with her psychic about the man that harbored these strong feelings for her for nearly half a century, the psychic told her “This man is your soul-mate that you yearned for through the years. He is your eternal love and your future husband.”

When Moti called her and told her that he felt she was his soul-mate and that she would become his wife, Ronit laughed. “I’m a grandmother of eight, I have three children” Ronit replied to Moti. “All you have is an image of me, a picture of me from 40 years ago. I’m a grown-up woman now”. But Moti kept on telling her “this is the real deal and they are meant to be together.”

As a romantic, determined man, Moti didn’t let go. He wrote her songs, sent her love letters, communicated to her via e-mails, and called her until Ronit agreed to meet him. “His song lyrics captured my soul,” she said.

Ronit was about to fly to Los Angeles to visit her children and grandchildren when she received a CD from Moti. As she listened to his recorded voice and music that was written and composed by him for her, she began to cry. His voice and the lyrics were compelling,” she said. “The lyrics and the song talked to my soul. I had to meet that man.” Moti sang, “Where are you woman, where are you my girl, where are you, the soul I was looking for?” Moti said, “The song indicated to her that she was communicated to from above. She felt that she received a sign indicating that this must be the soul-mate she had been waiting for.”

On New Years Eve 2004, Ronit made a decision to meet the man that had waited for her over 40 years. She flew to New York to meet with Moti. In spite of the signs that guided and directed her to meet with him she remained tense. However on the eve of New Years 2004, they finally met. Moti said, “I came to pick her up from the airport. Earlier that day I decorated the house with tons of flowers. I warmed up the Jacuzzi room, lit my romantic candles and prepared bottles of wine and champagne. He said, “Frankly, I was very nervous. I was afraid she won’t like the way I looked, or the way I dressed. For a moment I felt the need to put a blanket over my face. That is how self conscious I was.” However, as soon as he saw the beautiful blond with those striking familiar eyes (which he had seen in the tabloids and the magazines) approaching him, he was ready to embrace her.

They fell into each other arms and hugged for a long minute.

It was far beyond a meaningless encounter –“we were making love.”
After Ronit arrived at Moti’s home, she all of a sudden got cold feet and wished to go back home. But Moti in his compassionate yet determined way, talked to her heart, attempting to make her feel comfortable. Then Ronit suddenly asked him to have a council with her. ”Let us see what might happen” she said. He agreed, even though as a psychologist, this practice was not familiar to him. “In retrospect those precious hours of heart-to-heart communication saved our relationship that night,” said Moti. “We talked over three hours and got to know one another intimately at a soul level. We ended up making love and it was so deeply intimate, passionate, and exceptionally real!”

“We knew a miracle was happening right before our eyes”

After returning to Israel, Ronit came back to see Moti again and again for additional days filled with love, bonding and more heartfelt conversations into the nights. Ronit felt she started to live again. Less than one year later at one of the beautiful parks on the Hudson River, Moti proposed to Ronit.

On July 13, 2006 they got married in the Carmel forest in Israel. For both Moti and Ronit their dream finally came true.