Pixar couple's quirky tale of an animated love

There's something a little bit Ken-like about Angus MacLane, an animator at Pixar who worked on animating Barbie's famed boyfriend for "Toy Story 3."

However, his wife of five years, Tashana Landray, a feature film department manager at Pixar, is not at all Barbie-like. Still, when the two, both 35, sit on the couch in the full-size replica of Ken's Dream House in the atrium at Pixar's Emeryville studios, it seems like a good fit. Zany, perhaps, but entirely natural.

Natural also describes the couple's first meeting in 2001, at a San Francisco bar. Angus was on the dance floor practicing his particular style of grooving: "Good moves done poorly."

"Hilarious," says Tashana, who appreciated a guy unafraid to act foolish. Chatting, they discovered many things in common - strange names, and hippie parents who made their own granola. A date was arranged, during which they concocted plans for a second. "Well, we decided to crash a wedding," Angus says, without irony.

After some online research, the two picked an East Bay wedding. They brought a gift. They met the family of the bride. And they ended up both in wedding photos and later on "Good Morning America" - along with the couple whose wedding they attended.

It was a heck of a second date: "Light fraud" is how Angus puts it. "I loved how Tashana was able to cope with a crazy situation," he says. "She was comfortable with chaos."

Despite their successful high jinks, Tashana was going through a mid-20s crisis and was on her way to Tahoe to be a snow bum. She made no promises but knew Angus was really onboard when the avowed anti-driving and anti-snowboarding dude made the commitment to visit regularly and take to the slopes.

"From the beginning, I knew this was not a short-term thing," says Angus. Six months later, on Valentine's Day, Angus storyboarded a narrative of their romance. "Sweet," says Tashana, who knew then that they really had something. She was soon back in the Bay Area.

In 2004, Tashana saw a house she liked and suggested to Angus that they snag it - though he was living in Oakland and she in the city. Five days later, they were homeowners, and soon afterward they were engaged. For their wedding, in 2005, they invited the couple whose wedding they had crashed.

Though initially reluctant to work at the same place as her husband, Tashana started at Pixar that same year. "My career is important to me," she says, noting that there are many Pixar couples. "I didn't want to come in as the 'wife.' "

Now the couple make the morning commute with their 14-month-old daughter, who attends day care nearby at a place not at all like the Sunnyside child care center in the film.

Angus, in talking about the challenges of animating Ken, says his character "has everything, but is missing his kindred spirit."

Clearly, Angus is not.

Louise Rafkin has contributed to the New York Times and NPR's "All Things Considered." Couple suggestions? Send a story to onthecouch@sfchronicle.com.

This article appeared on page F - 2 of the San Francisco Chronicle