Neither Marla Bach nor Ken Saltzstine, both of whom are East Bay residents, was looking for true love at the time they met.

They have set their wedding date for July 21.

"I didn't have any expectations," says Saltzstine, who wrote and placed his personal ad in the fall of 1994. He was new to the personals scene and was "just looking for someone to talk to at that point: kind of an open-ended thing."

His bride-to-be recalls: "I wasn't looking to get married. I was perfectly happy by myself. I have a very full life."

So — why did they connect?

"I was probably more ready than I thought I was," Saltzstine reflects.

Bach, who had replied to other Bulletin personals, said Saltzstine's ad "didn't give me the impression that he's something other than what he is." And after she met him, she never scanned the Bulletin's personals again.

Linda Horenstein let friends drag her to the Jewish Bulletin's Singles Schmooze at Menlo Park's British Bankers Club last spring, where she wrote an ad that got Allan Shapiro's attention.

"I had tons of responses," said the Foster City sales representative, whose eye-catching personal ad read: "No more non-Jewish boy toys."

When she got a call from Shapiro, who is a San Francisco real estate consultant, the two chatted for 5-1/2 hours. By their third date, Horenstein felt her dream had come true.

"This is my prince," she said. "I have met the person I have always wanted."

She and Shapiro plan to recite their vows at San Francisco's Congregation Emanu-El Sept. 28.

The groom-to-be was philosophical about following his destiny in the pages of the Jewish Bulletin.

"If it was meant to be," he said, "it would be."