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The Bitkers, of Alameda, are communicators. Steve Bitker is the morning sports anchor on KCBS radio (740 AM). Alice Lai-Bitker, his wife, is president of the Alameda County Board of Supervisors.

Speaking clearly and accurately defines their diverse worlds. Slips of the tongue, double-talk and dead silence would only alienate their audiences.

No worry. The Bitkers are deemed truly professional. Steve, 56, is approaching his 20th year at KCBS, an admirable run in a major radio market. Alice, 51, is on her third term as supervisor — appointed once, elected twice.

And people are talking about the Bitkers — and to them.

“People ask me, ‘Your husband Steve Bitker? I listen to him all the time,’ ” said Alice.

“And people recognize me as Alice’s husband,” said Steve.

The Bitkers met by pure accident in the Far East in 1982.

Steve, a UC Berkeley graduate, was teaching conversational English in Tokyo. He took a 12-day tour of China with two American friends — a married lawyer couple. Alice just happened to be their tour guide.

“It was fate,” she said Wednesday at their Bay Farm Island home.

Now married for 25 years, with two daughters, 23 and 18, the Bitkers reminisced about their initial attraction to each other coming from different cultures.

“He was very polite and thoughtful,” said Alice, “because we got into a conversation about the world, society and

education. I thought, ‘This is a very intelligent guy with a good personality.’”‰”

“The three of us thought before the tour that she was perky and cute,” Steve said. “But I was most impressed with her character. She had amazing integrity.”

Chemistry between the two took awhile and really wasn’t cemented until Steve returned to Japan and sent Alice a 60-page journal of that same tour.

Alice’s father worried initially about the divorce rate among Westerners, but after her parents met Steve, they accepted him immediately (and they eventually immigrated to the Bay Area). And when Alice visited Steve in America, his parents were smitten with her. So much for cultural differences.

In June 1984, the Bitkers were married at the Aptos home of those same two lawyers, Leola Lapides and Bob Katz.

Alice then took graduate courses in social work at John F. Kennedy and San Francisco State. She was a social worker for 10 years as Steve pursued a radio career, which would lead to part-time play-by-play work with the Oakland A’s.

Alice had an opportunity to work for then-Supervisor Wilma Chan, which meant a six-year apprenticeship before Chan was elected to the state Assembly. Alice was picked from a field of 15 candidates, including elected officials, to replace Chan in December 2000. Alice then won re-election in 2002 and 2006.

“It’s very different,” she said of politics in the U.S. and her native China. “Here it’s more fundraising. There it’s public financing. But I feel I can make a difference, and I’d like to stay in politics at this level.”

“She still has more integrity than anyone I know,” said Steve. “And I admired the fact that she could succeed in the cutthroat world of politics at the county level.”

Alice, looking at her husband, said, “What you said about integrity, I can say the same thing about you, Steve. And his love of radio, compared to TV, he’s really committed to that (medium).”

Proving that KCBS is a great place to work, Hal Ramey, the afternoon sports anchor, has been there 22 years. Here are two anchors, both working drive-time shifts at the same station, with nearly 42 years combined.

“You may never see this again,” said Bitker.

When entering the Bitker home, guests immediately remove their shoes.

Custom?

“No,” said Steve, “it preserves the (white living room) carpet, and it’s quiet.”

A quiet form of communication.

Dave Newhouse’s columns appear Mondays, Thursdays and Sundays, usually on the Metro Page. Know any Good Neighbors? Phone 510-208-6466 or e-mail dnewhouse@bayareanewsgroup.com.