Dale Araki is a third-generation Japanese-American who spent most of his childhood in Arkansas, Alabama, Georgia and North Carolina before settling in San Francisco.
It was there in 1977 that he first met Shoko, who was to become his future wife.
They enrolled in a class on American phonetics at San Francisco State University — Dale as an undergraduate and Shoko as a graduate student. They shared a rare commonality — Dale's father made a living in chick-sexing, and Shoko's uncle had a chick-sexing school in Japan.