I met most of my friends, and my SO through a messageboard. Granted, we all live in the same city, and participate in the music scene, but without our online community I don’t think we’d be the close knit group that we are today. It started with the basic curiosity to meet some of the faces behind the screen-names and has turned into quite a phenomenon.
Yup. This board, and Dopefests particularly, has become a great place for like-minded people to meet.
Me ‘n’ UncleBill (married)
Montfort and Anniz (married, and about to have a baby)
Weirddave and GingerOfTheNorth (married)
TruePisces and Verrain (about to be married)
bristlesage and DynoSaur (engaged)
manhattan and canby
elenfair and lno (engaged)
Euty and Persephone
thinksnow and laserkitty (engaged)
Miss Creant and Mr. Cynical (married)
vix and SuaSponte (soon to be cohabitating)
Zyada and rjk (engaged)
…and I KNOW there are more I’m forgetting.
My freshman year of college, I was up late one night writing a paper. I decided to take a break at about two AM, and hopped on IM for a little while. I used the “find a buddy” feature to search in the athiesm list, since the most interesting people were usually found there. I randomly picked someone off the list solely because his screenname included a small, furry animal. His profile included a few bits of advice, along the lines of “don’t pee into the wind,” so I proceeded to type out the entire text of the quote from the Princess Bride during the iocane powder scene–you know the one–“The two most famous pieces of advice are this…” and clicked “send.”
He responded with “well, you’ve got me beat :).” We chatted for a while; I did not finish my paper that night. I was pleasently surprised when he IM’ed me the next night, and we talked nearly every single night after that. Maybe six months later he called me on the phone and I heard his voice for the first time. Almost exactly two years after we first chatted, he bought a plane ticket and came to visit me for the first time, and when he stepped off the plane and I saw him, it was like running into someone on the street whom you’ve known your entire life. A piece fell into place in my heart.
We spent the next two years visiting each other on school breaks; about once every three or four months he would fly to California, or I’d go to Atlanta. We spent the first Christmas at his parents’ house and I met his family.
Four years later, we both graduated from college and he moved out to live with me for the summer before we both move to Eugene, Oregon, where he’s enrolled as a grad student beginning next week. The wedding is planned for some time next summer 
Due to an unhappy situation that involved my (recent) ex-girlfriend and our circle of friends, I really had no one to talk to in my area (Vancouver, BC). Looking for someone with whom I could just pass the time, I signed on to penpal.net and soon thereafter began corresponding with a woman from Washington, DC.
As I didn’t have much work to do, I would write one or two long missives every day, talking about anything and everything. Good times were had by all and I was much happier than I had been in a long while. For the longest time, we did not describe what we looked like or discussed our love lives. After a while, we offered our mental image of what the other looked like, and had our guesses confirmed or denied, but never a full description.
One day as I was checking my e/mail, I got a letter from her that it was starting to snow really badly and that she was being sent home, so it would only be a short letter, which I read. As I was just closing it, another one came in from her address, with no subject line. I opened it up and there was just one sentence: “Okay, this might seem a bit weird, but can I give you my phone number?” I immediately replied yes, but she’d already left for the day.
She gave it to me the next week and we started talking about every 2-3 days.
Not long thereafter, my work transferred me from BC to Hamilton, ON. When I got there, I immediately got an account at a cyber-cafe and we continued our correspondence. I had also written a “play” for her office to perform at its annual retreat. Seeing as how I was on 2 week’s vacation and not knowing anyone in Hamilton, I offered to come down to DC and help produce the little skit. And of course, finally meet my correspondent.
It should be noted here that I had just had my birthday and she’d sent me a little package with fun little toys and pictures of her. I myself had sent her pictures of me. Unfortunately, hers got stuck at the border and as such, I had absolutely no idea what she looked like.
I drove the 8 1/2 hours down to DC and waited for her at the Silver Diner on Rockville Pike for about an hour. As I was sitting down outside having a smoke, a car pulled in right next to mine, and this beautiful red-headed woman stepped out. She stopped and lit a cigarette and started walking towards the diner, slowing down as she came near me. I stood up and asked if she was the woman I’d been writing to and talking to but never seen. She nodded, we hugged, and she said the words that I’d been planning on uttering myself the whole way down: “You’re real.”
We’ve been married now for 3 years. Our wedding day, my new in-laws took us to breakfast at the very same Silver Diner.
I’m looking forward to all the years ahead of us.
Exact same situation here. We had known eachother for about 2.5 years before it became a relationship. It’s been a year since then, and he’s moving up by me for college in about 2 weeks.
I love these stories too!
I met my fiance online 5 years ago I believe. We ended up, by some strange chace, playing a games of Spades together on Yahoo. I HATE playing with bad partners, and he of course was as good of a player as I am, so I had to ask for contact info so we could play together again. From there it went to all night ICQ…
For the next 2 years there were many night of IM’s and emails. Finally we got up the courage to talk on the phone. This lead to phone calls lasting until dawn. That went on for a year and FINALLY he came to see me. I was already crazy about him at that point, but the first week we spent together was amazing. I was still in school in West Va at the time and he was in Texas.
I graduated last May and moved down here a week later. He proposed on July 3rd of this year and we’ll be getting married in March of next year!