Pickup at a bar, sort of.
We used to hang out at the same bar in college, so I knew her face but we never spoke. Then she showed up at my roommate’s party, so we spoke and liked each other. I kept running into her in the bar during the next few weeks and we kept talking.
February, 1971…almost 39 years ago…
I totally had no way of knowing that she would be my wife when we first met… instead, we just assumed that each other had cooties since both of us were only 7 years old!
No internet, no BBS, just a parochial school in Fontana, CA with some mean-ass penguins.
Bounced around schools over the years, but we kept crossing paths through common friends…she started looking hawt to me in high school at Aquinas HS in San Bernardino, but she was shy and I had a girlfriend that year (1978). She went to UC Riverside while I went to Cal Poly Pomona and it wasn’t until 1983 that I called her out of the blue and asked her to double date (with common friends) and go bowling and then to Denny’s. I guess it was pretty serious when we spent my 21st birthday up at Tahoe and slept in the same bed. But that is an entirely different story that would only daze and confuse most normal humans.
Now, looking at our class pictures now is quite a hoot. We were totally gooberific.
alt.atheism, on Usenet.
I was aware of him for about 6 or 7 years, we’d chat on ICQ or AIM (because I worked online at the time, I was on weird hours - I was in the US and he was in Australia.)
I divorced my first husband, he left his long term partner, we talked about this and other things, and after all that he called me, and we were on the phone nine hours.
Much phonage later, I went to Australia to visit. I came back three months later and stayed.
We’ve been married 6 1/2 years. I love him desperately.
I stepped completely out of character (not being any kind of social person at all) and wrangled an invitation to a party that the group’s secretary was holding. At the party, a friend and I spent a lot of time talking to a good-lookin’ cheerful gal in cowboy boots who seemed to have her head screwed on pretty securely.
After the party, my friend seemed interested in her, but I shooed him off pretty firmly and claimed her for myself (although I’m normally the world’s least aggressive guy–my hormones must’ve been kicking in or something 
).
We got married about a year later and have been married for, um, 24 years now; we just sent our youngest off to college, and the good-lookin’ cheerful gal is going back to school to get her Masters. She’s still good-lookin’ and cheerful, by the way.
On the bus back from a school-sponsored ski trip, I sat next to my friend Janelle and he sat across the aisle from me with his friend Bubba. The four of us talked all the way to my driveway, where I got off. During some story, he laid down a line that had me in hysterics forever. That was 9th grade and several centuries ago.
We started dating my junior year in high school in '93; married in 2000. He’s the best part of my life.
Best funny line ever: “Cleanup on aisle 9!”
We met online. I can’t remember the website, but it was an ad I put up and he replied with a Carl Sagan joke. He asked me to marry him the first time we met in person. I said no and he said “You will.”
I did. 
San Jose International Airport. She got off the plane. I was at the gate waiting for her.
At college, where she was visiting a friend of mine, someone she met at band camp during Junior High. it was during our Independent Activities Period, where we were at school but not doing much. She says I was her bridge partner for a game, but I don’t remember that. Her friend wanted her to go to see her play violin in a Gilbert & Sullivan production out in the suburbs. I had been snookered into going there earlier in the week, so I invited my future wife ice skating. That was it.
Everyone has a crazy friend.
Our crazy friends met at the beach. Her crazy friend had dragged her to the beach to celebrate her breaking off an engagement to what her family calls “that asshole.” Since our crazy friends wanted to get together, and screw, but her crazy friend wouldn’t come without a chaperone, my crazy friend figured that my place fit all of my wife’s criteria for a “safe place.” Over 25, had his own place, and a job. I figured “what the hell. If I don’t like them, I’ll just get drunk.”
Crazy friends screwed in various places in my apartment, and we all had a great time. My wife was moving apartments, as was I just after we met, so communicating was an issue, but we finally got in touch with each other, and met up again alone. I was supposed to be a one night stand, but now 12 years later, we’ve been 10 years married.
Personally, I give credit to her cat. Her cat hates men, but jumped in my lap less than 5 minutes after I arrived… she figured if the cat liked me, I’m probably all right.
Match.com. Honest to Og. We’re getting married in January.
She was eight years old at the time. I was drunk, passed out on her lawn.
<We’ll just give a moment for that to digest>
The night before, a buddy of mine and I had gone to a hellacious party (even though we were both well underage). I was supposed to crash at his place, but never actually made it through the door that night. The next day, I met his kid sister – although she had seen me stagger into the yard and flop down for a little nap. But hey, I looked like a badass rock star back then, so she immediately had a little girl crush.
Fast-forward 10 years, and I’m now roommates with this guy. One day his kid sister comes by to show him her new car. My reaction was in the neighborhood of “Daaaaaaamn, Linda done grown up!”. A few weeks later we were both part of a group of friends who went to an amusement park together. We ended up on the log flume, her sitting on my lap. I thought she was really cute, but A) she was 10 years younger than me, and B) she was my best friend’s kid sister. You just don’t go there. But then she had to screw things up royally by turning around and kissing me.
That was 13 years ago, ten of them spent married to the most wonderful woman I’ve ever met. Damn glad she decided to make that move on me…
At a Hallowe’en party, we’ll be celebrating the tenth anniverary of our first meeting next week.
A friend of my sister’s had a friend who was looking for a “good, honest man”, my sister, for whatever reason, recommended me. (She must not know me as well as I thought.) We were originally supposed to meet at a Thanksgiving get together at the mutual friend’s place, but I chickened out. (Remember, of course, Canadian Thanksgiving is in October, same day as Columbus Day in the US). Mutual friend and sister then invited me to a Hallowe’en party a at the house of a friend of theirs. This time, they were smart not to mention the girl they wanted to set me up with until after I got there. My future wife was late in coming (she’s always late to things), but ten years later I still recall the first moment I saw her. I was talking with said mutual friend in the kitchen, but you could see the front door from there. For some reason, I was looking at the front door, when it opened, and she stepped in. I immediately asked Mutual Friend “is that her?” and was assured that it was. I was still too shy at that point to go up and talk to her and Mutual Friend didn’t force us together (which is odd for her, because if she wants something done, It Will Get Done. (She was of course the logical choice for maid of honour at the wedding and to plan things) Anyways, I later saw someone else at the party, obviously drunk, starting to talk to Future Wife, and that’s when I made my move to come over and start a conversation with her - that way I looked like a hero to her for “saving her” from the drunk, and I didn’t have to worry about someone else stealing the girl set up for me! The rest, as they say, was history.
The funniest part was that it was a Halloween party, so both of us were in costume. I was dressed as Groucho Marx - she couldn’t remember my real name, so she kept calling me “Groucho” throughout the night. Whereas for me, when we set up our first date a week later at the movie theatre, the only way I knew who to look for was that she was wearing the same red coat she was at the first moment I laid my eyes on her (I obviously still remembered it a week later, I still remember that moment now.)
Hey, when I broke up with the last long-term girlfriend I had, I was about 27 years old at the time. She was six.
However, her birthday is February 29, so mine isn’t as creepy as yours.
Congrats on your potential future marriage! 
It has been awhile. I’ve been around off an on, mostly lurking. For awhile there I couldn’t post because I had lapsed into guest mode and even though guests could post, I couldn’t, it was weird. I didn’t want a ban by creating another account.
I miss that theater. A bit before I graduated and moved to Western Washington, they moved it on the other side of Broadway, off Hitt street. Nice place now, even has a little Bistro type of shop attached.
Well, I am not married, but I met my SO of 15 years at my weed dealer.