Pop quiz: what do celebrity couples David Bowie and Iman, and Seal and Heidi Klum have in common? Apart from the obvious singer-model coupling, they are also part of a huge community who have overcome geographical borders to meet and marry people of different nationalities. Both Bowie and Seal are English, while Klum is German and Iman is Somali-born.

It seems that being born in different countries – or continents, even – is no barrier to falling in love. And in this day and age of the internet, international marriages aren’t just for the rich and famous.

Here in the Reader’s Digest office, we have at least two such couplings: our American design director David Ross married his Japanese wife, Hiroko, four years ago, while Natalie Thompson, an editor on Discovery Channel Magazine, who is English, is expecting her first child with her Taiwanese husband, Victor.

Global statistics aren’t available currently, but if Singapore is anything to go by – nearly 40 percent of all marriages registered in 2008 involved a non-citizen spouse – what we’re looking at is a social trend that’s more than caught on.

It’s certainly not a new concept. International marriages have been around for a very long time. Just think of Europe’s royal families. The best way to build an alliance was to marry a royal from another country. Think Henry VIII and his unfortunate first wife, Katherine of Aragon – a failed Anglo-Spanish merger.

What is new about international marriages in the 21st century is that the couples coming together are about as diverse as they get. That’s really due to the advent of easy, affordable travel – planes have turned our planet into a veritable global village.

Meeting your significant other as a student overseas or while travelling for work or pleasure is commonplace. But wherever your spouse is from and regardless of how you met, the experts say the same thing: while cultural differences create more possibilities for conflict and misunderstanding, they do not determine the success – or failure – of a marriage.

“It’s more of how couples deal with such differences and disappointments that determines the quality of the marriage,” says Jonathon Siew, a marriage counsellor based in Singapore. Three couples we spoke to echo this view. Here are their Valentine stories.

Melanie Albat & Cuong Tu

It’s lunchtime at the Asia Garden restaurant in Hanover, Germany. It’s one of the busiest days in August of 2000, but part-time waitress Melanie Albat has things under control. A voice drifts across the cacophony of customers. It’s soft, but distinctive. Both mellow and soothing, it flows seamlessly between flawless German and English.

Melanie’s interest is piqued. She checks out the owner of the voice, who is sitting at a table that’s not in her section. Undeterred, Melanie deftly proceeds to serve lunch at the table she’s eyeing, and promptly drops a plate of hot beef on the table where an unsuspecting Cuong Tu is seated.

“I was sitting and Melanie was wearing tight pants. I’ll be very honest with you – I thought she was very sensual,” Cuong recalls. The next three weeks saw Cuong going back to the restaurant in hopes of catching her there, but he kept missing her. Finally, their paths crossed again.

“The moment she saw me, she went, ‘Where the hell have you been?’, and I knew I was in. She was the one. I didn’t go back for the food; it wasn’t particularly amazing. I went back for her. I was 27 and she 22 at the time. We’ve been together almost ten years, and have been married for five.”

The classic tale of boy meets girl has a twist – Melanie is German and Cuong is Australian. They met, courted and married despite 10,000 miles separating their native countries.

Born Vietnamese, Cuong is an Australian of Chinese heritage. His family fled Vietnam in an oil tanker together with 3000 people, and were taken in by Germany as refugees. Cuong lived there with his parents for six years. When he was 11, his family migrated to Australia.

Melanie isn’t your typical German either. Her mother is Spanish, adding a fiery element into the mix of cultures and languages.

Between them, they speak four different tongues. How do they communicate?

“In the beginning of our rela-tionship, we would speak in half English, half German. Later, we switched to German,” says Melanie. “I’ve decided that at home, we need to speak German, because we speak English all day at work. I also have the feeling that I get my point across much better in German.”

“But when I swear at her, I do it in English,” quips Cuong. “It’s more effective. German swear words aren’t as nice – they’re not as brutal.”