Do wires need to share similar characteristics in order for crosstalk to occur?
Your question is a bit confusing since your title doesn't quite match what you asked. You also makes few statements that are incompletes.


  You basically tune your transmitter and receiver to a similar frequency in order to get a cross-coupling of energy 


Receiver and transmitter are often complex system including many subssystems. They includes modulator/demodulator, antennas, filters etc. So "tuning" them is a complex task that requires many parts to interract together.


  Is this analogous true for crosstalk in parallel unshielded, untwisted wires where the 2 wires have similar inductance and capacitance?


A capacitance involve two elements. A single wire doesn't have a capacitance. It has a capacitance with something else.

This being said, to answer your title question, no, two wires doesn't need to share similar charateristic (I assume here that you refer the resistance and inductance) to have crosstalk.

See Wikipedia's definition :


  In electronics, crosstalk is any phenomenon by which a signal transmitted on one circuit or channel of a transmission system creates an undesired effect in another circuit or channel. Crosstalk is usually caused by undesired capacitive, inductive, or conductive coupling from one circuit, part of a circuit, or channel, to another.


You need some sort of coupling between the two elements. In the case of long unshielded, untwisted wires, there is severals sources of coupling :


Capacitive coupling. The 2 wires act as a capacitors. Capacitor have low impedance at high frequency. A fast time-varying signal like an aggressive digital edge or a high frequency radio signal in one conductor would affect to other conductor. Capacitive coupling has nothing to do with electromagnetic waves.
Inductive coupling. Long wires next to each other also have an inductive coupling, so they act as transformer. Big currents in one conductor will create a magnetic fields that will induce an electromagnetic force in the other conductor.
ElectroMagnetic coupling (or interference). EMI will moslty be present if you have big changes of current in time. The length, material, shape of the wire will all affect its effectiveness to transmit/receive EM waves. Altough you seemed interested in "tuning" your wire to avoid interference, EMI is not restricted in bandwidth. A current surge in a wire will generates noise in a very wide frequency range. Even if you have an antenna tuned for a specific frequency, it will receives noise anyway. 


Hope I could make things a little clearer.