San Antonio, Texas, June 19: Two Texas prisoners who have never met were married by proxy yesterday in a San Antonio courtroom and can now look forward to their honeymoon -- in 2036 at the earliest.
State district judge Johnny Gabriel married Diane Zamora, 25, and Steven Mora, 27, using her mother and Mora's friend as stand-ins, Bexar county clerk Gerry Rickhoff said.
The husband and wife have not met, but began writing letters to each other after Mora saw Zamora on television, his family said. They are in prisons (208 km) apart.
Zamora is a former US naval academy midshipman who, along with then-boyfriend David Graham, an air force academy cadet, was sentenced to life in prison in a 1996 trial for the murder of a 16-year-old girl who was her romantic rival.
She must serve at least 40 years in prison and will not be eligible for parole until 2036, Texas department of criminal justice spokesman Larry Fitzgerald said.



Mora is scheduled to get out of prison next March after serving a four-year sentence for threatening retaliation against someone who helped put him in prison on an earlier charge.



Rickhoff gave the pair a marriage license after the Texas attorney general's office ruled there was no reason not to.


Bureau Report