When Ford first met the young assistant on the set of Apocalypse Now in 1976, "I found her very attractive," he said in 1998. "But it wasn't just the look of her. It was the way she behaved, the intellectual connection we made." Around that time his 12-year marriage to Marquardt was on a downward slide: He was constantly traveling and Marquardt, a Wisconsin native, didn't fit in with the Hollywood scene, say friends, nor did she particularly want to. "I was definitely not Mr. Sweetness and Light," Ford later said of their marriage. "I was an inadequate husband and father."

Unlike her predecessor, Mathison, who was raised in Los Angeles -- one of five children of a journalist and a homemaker -- "was a Hollywood girl," casting director Fred Roos told Robert Abele, author of a recent book on Ford. "Melissa was very sharp, very well-read, very quick and witty and a lot of fun."

After his divorce from Marquardt, Ford married Mathison in March 1983 in a simple 15-minute ceremony at the Santa Monica Courthouse. "It was just part of the continuum of the relationship," he later said. "I don't know if I ever proposed to her." Which is not to say he was never romantic: Over the years he never missed a birthday or anniversary and has been known to stage surprise candlelit dinners. "I have a romantic vision of life," he said. "But I have a degree of cynicism and experience that mitigates against my romantic point of view."

And although Ford and Mathison have much in common -- both cherish their children, their privacy and their work -- their marriage, friends say, was as imperfect as anyone's. "He's no picnic," Ford's Star Wars costar Carrie Fisher told writer Abele of her long-time pal. "I mean, as much as it might be the fantasy for a lot of people to be the wife of that, it's tricky. And it takes work."

While Mathison seems to enjoy the city life, Ford is most at home at the family's Jackson Hole, Wyo., ranch where he keeps everything in perfect order. "He's incredibly anal about it," Fisher said. "It really gives him pleasure to have his surroundings just so. He requires a bit of an orbit." Indeed, on a visit by a PEOPLE reporter, Mathison shook her head and laughed as the fastidious Ford, who washes dishes as soon as they're set down, complained that someone had moved things in his absence.