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So after a romantic weekend in Seward, he stopped the car at Bear Lake and handed her his last pack of cigarettes. Then he handed her the ring...

Lacey and Michael Gaddis spent part of their honeymoon with Jay Leno.

OK, they weren't exactly with him, but they were in the audience. In the front row.

"George Clooney was five feet away," said Lacey, 23. "I could almost touch him. But I didn't. I was with Michael."

The University of Anchorage Alaska students married last Nov. 25 and took a two-week honeymoon driving from Seattle to San Diego. They drove through a redwood tree, swam in the ocean, scared themselves silly on roller coasters and argued over how many Shamus were really at Sea World.

It was "an experience," they said - a chance to really get to know one another. Locked in the car for hours at a time, they learned to navigate through conflict and listen to what the other wanted. It wasn't easy.

"I noticed our differences after about a week on the honeymoon," Michael, 28, said. "I finally had a day to myself and slept until about 3 p.m. I thought, wow, this is cool ... But there was Lacey, tapping her foot and saying 'I'm bored.'

"And I saw then how marriage was going to be."

The couple told their story while curled up on the sofa of their condo. They touched often: a hand on the other's knee, a head tucked cozily against a shoulder.

Michael, from Mountain View, Alaska, works at a car dealership. Lacey, who grew up in Healy, Alaska, is program assistant at the university's Automotive and Diesel Technology Department. They met last year while attending Alaska Vocational Technical Center in Seward.

"I knew right away," Michael said. "I developed a crush. I didn't talk to her. I couldn't."

"I had no idea who he was," Lacey said with a laugh.

The last day of Michael's program, he approached Lacey in the cafeteria. "I said I would probably never see her again. She didn't say anything. She just picked up her tray and walked away."

"It was too dramatic for me," Lacey said, punching him lightly in the arm.

She called him later, and they spent the rest of the evening talking. Michael moved to Anchorage to attend the university, and they dated long distance until April 2006, when Lacey moved to attend the university, too.

A few months later, Michael spent his student loan money on a ring. He didn't propose, however; Lacey always told him that she would never marry a man who smoked. So after a romantic weekend in Seward, he stopped the car at Bear Lake and handed her his last pack of cigarettes. Then he handed her the ring.

"I didn't know what to do with the cigarettes," Lacey said. "So I threw them out the window."

The wedding was a mad, tense time. They lost each other's rings. They couldn't find anyone to do the ceremony. But in the end, it all worked out.

"It was so much fun," Lacey said. "We were such dorks. We laughed through half of the ceremony."

They attended a premarital counseling program through their church, and that, they said, has been an enormous help.

"We had to rethink about what roles we were going to take on," Lacey said. "I'm goal-oriented, and Michael is more the hands-on type. I had to learn that it's OK for him to be different."

The biggest adjustment has been the shift in lifestyles.

"We've both grown up a lot this year," Lacey said. "We've had to focus on the marriage, and it's been exhausting. I swear, it's like we disappeared from the face of the earth the first month."

Michael reached over and squeezed her hand.

"When you butt heads and the argument becomes unbearable, you can't run," he said. "And that's hard for our generation. We've been taught that if you don't like it, you can leave. But you can't do that in your marriage. You figure it out and laugh about it later. You keep going."

An important lesson underlined on their road trip.