MCT

Trivia experts Kara Kovalchik, left, and Sandy Wood of Birmingham, Mich., spend their days tracking down interesting facts.

DETROIT -- Sitting in the same home office at separate computers, Sandy Wood and Kara Kovalchik spend their days tracking down the kind of stuff that can keep you awake at 3 a.m., in a good way.

Why are tennis balls fuzzy?

What's the title of the "Sanford and Son" theme?

Is there really a Hidden Valley Ranch?

"We work holidays, we work evenings," Kovalchik said.

"We put in more hours now than we ever did," chimed in Wood.

You could describe the husband-and-wife team from Birmingham, Mich., as trivia experts, but that would trivialize what they've accomplished. Trivia experts win contests at bars or play along with "Jeopardy." They're the ones you call if you really, truly need to know Kenny G's name.

Wood and Kovalchik (who know, of course, that it's Gorelick) deserve another title, like professional facts wranglers or navigational captains of the information age.

Their new book, "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Fun FAQs" (Alpha Books, $12.95), is the latest project in a 15-year odyssey that allowed them to quit their former day jobs.

In their book, you'll find out tennis balls are fuzzy because it helps players control their shots, the "Sanford and Son" theme by Quincy Jones is called "The Streetbeater," and yes, Virginia, there is a Hidden Valley Ranch in California.

There, now can you sleep tonight?

From love to new jobs

Before trivia became a full-time career, Wood had bounced around at numerous jobs including a security guard and a vacuum repairman. Kovalchik spent 20 years in the steel business.

Now they make their living as research editors for Mental Floss, a magazine for knowledge junkies, and editorial directors for Tidbits, a free publication read by 4 million people nationwide.

They've written or co-written four books, including "The Snapple Aptitude Test," and provided content for calendars, card games, a board game and a Hillary Clinton talking pen.

And there's more: Kovalchik was a phone-a-friend earlier this year on the syndicated daytime version of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire."

"After years of skating by as underachievers, we finally discovered our niche," they write on their Web site, Pigpencil.com.

Theirs is a love story for our pop-culture-preoccupied times.

In their case, love means never having to explain an obscure reference. They share a passion for classic TV, movies, '70s rock, the hows and whys of everyday objects and collecting memorabilia associated with brands such as Mr. Pibb and Chick-Fil-A.

"You want somebody you can be yourself with and talk about things you're interested in. We've been married 14 years and haven't run out of things to talk about yet," said Wood, 41, who has a soft Southern accent from growing up in rural Georgia. "And you've got to remember, for the last five years, we've worked together."

"Shoulder to shoulder," said Kovalchik, a Warren, Mich., native in her late 40s with a bubbly laugh.

The two met in 1988 at a convention in Hazel Park for the British rock group Queen. She was the walking encyclopedia of band facts. He was the young upstart who "shows up out of nowhere ... impinging on my territory," Kovalchik recalls.

Competition led to friendship, but things didn't turn romantic until 1992, when they were on a group trip to England for another Queen convention. They married in 1994.

That was around the time they got their first home computer and started playing online trivia games. Their skills were so strong, America Online invited them to become hosts. For many years, they ran a trivia game for AOL every Saturday night. In return for spending the day preparing questions and running the game in real time, they got a free AOL account.

The experience was an education in finding information and determining its reliability. They learned the importance of accuracy and precise writing. Players were quick to challenge them if a question wasn't phrased correctly or had an alternate answer.

By the early 2000s, both were tired of their regular jobs. They put together a trivia-themed book proposal and searched for other trivia outlets. Kovalchik ran across an early issue of Mental Floss, which the quirky magazine's co-founder Will Pearson described as "all the stuff you should have learned in school, but somehow didn't."

An e-mail to Mental Floss led to an invitation to fact-check an issue and then to their current jobs, where they do research and write the print and online quizzes.

Will Pearson, the co-founder of Mental Floss, said of the couple: "They just know how to dig and find this fascinating information. They just have a real drive. As much as we appreciate their intelligence and skill, I can't tell you how much we appreciate their hunger to find the best information."

Although Pearson jokingly said they fit in with "the kind of oddballs who'd start a magazine like Mental Floss," he said there's a serious side to having research skills.

Old-fashioned research

As industrial jobs disappear in places such as Detroit, people are wondering what to do next. But in the information age, there's a glut of content -- and opportunities for those who know how to manage it.

"Now the real skill is finding what's accurate, finding what's useful and knowing how to navigate through this sea of information that's out there," Pearson said. "It's not just Googling something and going with the first thing that pops up. That will be a skill that people will have to have in the future."

Although Wood and Kovalchik do a lot of their work on the Web, they also rely on libraries and their own reporting to ferret out the facts.

Rarely do they trust the fascinating facts that bounce around on e-mails, because most of them are wrong, according to Wood, the "did you know a duck's quack doesn't echo and all those kinds of lists."

They work in different corners of a room inside their home, which they share with their cat, Tweak. Wood likes to start the day at a nearby Borders in Birmingham, Mich. Kovalchik sometimes finds her work groove at 4 or 5 a.m.

Still, a job is a job, and there are deadlines to meet and pressure to handle. They're always working, in a sense, because watching a movie or going antiquing or taking a walk in the neighborhood can prompt an idea.

But trivia is more than spewed facts. It taps into a deep, universal part of the human experience -- our desire for knowledge, our curiosity about the world, and, here's a big one, our competitive streak.

"People love knowing things other people don't," Wood said.