Our Story
Here is my story of how fate brought two people together. I never thought it could be possible, but it is.
My name is Dana. I'm 35 years old and I live in Pennsylvania. I've been online since Jan. 1998. I started coming online to escape my unhappy marriage.
While chatting online, I met some wonderful ladies. I have met two of them in person. We went to Myrtle Beach together in the summer of '98, for a "girl's" weekend. We had such a great time!
During the summer of '98 we all got icq. That turns out, to be the BEST thing that I ever downloaded into my computer! Up until this time, I mostly only chatted with women. I never really was interested in chatting with men. I heard plenty of horror stories about men on the internet. One day, we all decided to try the random feature of icq. We started meeting new people, mostly men, that's all that was interested in sending out messages!
One night... Oct. 4, 1998 to be exact, I got a random message from someone named "jim". It started off very nice, not stupid and arrogant like most messages that we were used to getting. We chatted for a few hours that night and both added each other to our icq list. Every night I'd sit there and wait for "jim" to come online, and every night he would be there.
He was from California, 37 years old and never married. After weeks of chatting for hours every night, we exchanged phone numbers. Jim called me the very next day. I couldn't believe that I was falling in love with someone that I have never met in person. At this point, I have never even seen a picture of him! It didn't matter to me, I was totally in love with this man.
He told me one night that he was going to fly out to meet me. I couldn't believe that we were finally going to meet!
On Nov. 13, 1998, we met for the first time!
Jim flew to Baltimore and we spent the weekend together. We had the BEST time! It was like we have known each other forever.
The hardest thing I ever had to do in my life was watch him get back on that plane!
It's very strange and hard for people to understand, unless it has happened to them, that two people can be that connected so fast.
After our "real life" meeting, we knew that we wanted to try to make this relationship work.
Jim told me that I was going to come to California to visit him. That was SO FUNNY because I was terrified of planes! I flew before and didn't want to chance it again, crashing that is! LOL, but I wanted to be with Jim even more than I was afraid to fly.
On Dec. 30, 1998, I flew to Sacramento. It was perfect, we got to spend the New Year together, which was wonderful for a lot of reasons. I've never been to California before, I loved it! Everything was so beautiful.
Jim took me to Lake Tahoe, Monterey, and San Fransisco. He introduced me to his sister and brother. He has a wonderful family. I had the best time of my life. But again, we had to say goodbye. :(
We talked about Jim moving to Pennsylvania. I couldn't because I couldn't take my kids out of the state with my divorce. Jim was going to move to Pennsylvania in 6 months to a year, but that soon changed! One day he told me that he'd be here by March!
Jim worked his last day in California on March 1st. March 2nd he was on the road with Bronco, a Uhaul trailer(with motorcycle onboard), and dog, Buddy.
It took them 6 days to get here. It's been wonderful from that day on! My kids loved him from day one, which i wasn't worried about at all, I knew they would.
Jim proposed to me on Memorial Day '99 and we set a wedding date for October 1, 1999. Almost one year from the day we met.