In the 1999 romantic comedy Runaway Bride, newspaper columnist Ike Graham travels to Hale, Maryland, to write about Maggie Carpenter.
Richard Gere plays Ike, a New York columnist who hears that Maggie has repeatedly left men at the altar. After publishing an article based on incomplete information, he is challenged to investigate the story in person and travels to Maggie’s hometown.
Julia Roberts plays Maggie, a hardware-store employee whose reputation as a runaway bride has been built through sensational accounts of her previous weddings. Ike’s reporting assignment gradually becomes entangled with his own assumptions about relationships and commitment.
Runaway Bride reunited Gere and Roberts after Pretty Woman, but the characters and story are entirely different. Ike is a columnist rather than a television reporter, and Hale is a fictional Maryland town created for the film.