In Wednesday’s Post, Libby Copeland finds out how in the heck 61-year-old presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich ended up marrying a tall redheaded bombshell less than half his age.

It involves a Buddha statue, a radical economics institute leader, love at first sight, oh, and Shirley MacLaine. Why not? Also implicated are a series of random coincidences: a fortune cookie that has the Chinese word for “hat” when Elizabeth Kucinich just bought a hat the other day.

As Dennis later told his buddy Shirley MacLaine, he had to stop looking at Elizabeth for fear he’d declare his love for her right then and there.

“Did I give the slightest indication?” Kucinich asks his wife on the couch. “Tell me — I didn’t.”

“Maybe not consciously,” Elizabeth says, “but I did walk out and I phoned my grandmother and said, ‘I’ve met a congressman and he’s fallen in love with me.’ ”

Dennis gives a deep belly laugh. He seems amazed once again. Elizabeth caresses the spot above his ear where the black hair is turning gray. “I’d fallen in love with him, too, but I didn’t tell her that bit,” she says.

Kucinich gave the redhead and her boss copies of a bill proposing a U.S. Department of Peace. And he gave them his e-mail address, hoping she’d get the hint. They left.

He ran down to the floor of the House beaming.

He told his friends: “I met her.” He didn’t say who. He didn’t explain what. He just said, simply: “I met her.”

“I said, ‘Well, Dennis, this is deep,’ ” recalls Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones (D-Ohio).

“I didn’t know what he was talking about,” recalls Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.). [WP-The Love Song of Dennis J. Kucinich]

Kudos to Ms. Copeland. Double kudos to the copywriter who came up with the headline. (In another bizarre coincidence that can only be attributed to kismet, I have a scheduled post coming up with some T. S. Eliot poetry…)