"At the Nobel Prize dinner in Stockholm, I was seated next to my future wife, Eva Meyersson, who charmed me from the start with her wit and laugh and tolerance for my awkward dancing. But there was a problem: she lived in Stockholm while I lived in California.

How does love overcome such a great distance? Home in California, thinking about Eva, I considered my next move. Any woman in Stockholm, I imagined, would be sceptical about starting a relationship with a California man and would likely be discouraged by her confidants, too, but a sufficiently grand gesture would be hard to dismiss. So, I wrote to Eva, 'since you live in Stockholm and I live in Palo Alto, I’ll send you an airline ticket and meet you anywhere in the world.' That offer left some confidants speechless, but when Eva spoke to her grandmother, she got some sage advice. 'Come back to Stockholm,' was Eva’s reply. So, I did.

Eva and I were married on September 17, 2000, on Eva’s 48th birthday. Eva and I travelled and had fun and visited Sweden often. In 2006, to celebrate our tenth meeting anniversary, the Nobel Foundation invited us back to Nobel celebrations and arranged a press conference for us, where I was to deliver the best single line of my life. On live TV, with Eva’s family and friends watching, I was asked how I felt that I had not won the Prize that year. I answered: 'Oh, but I’m the one who went home with the biggest prize!'"

- economist Paul Milgrom on how he met his wife Eva at the Nobel Prize banquet 27 years ago.

Photo: Eva Meyersson Milgrom and Paul Milgrom on the day Milgrom was presented with his prize in economic sciences in Palo Alto, California, US. Credit: © Nobel Prize Outreach. Photo: Elena Zhukova.

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