I saw this question over on the Snopes board and thought it might be nice here too. So, how did you meet your SO (or previous SOs)?
I met mine at uni - we’d already kind of known each other for two years but he hadn’t really registered with me until one day when we were both in the common room frantically dashing off essays that should have been done weeks ago. We argued, we laughed, and 2 years later here we are 
Fran
At university too.
When my mother was a little girl, my grandfather jokingly told her that he and my grandmother met when they both bumped heads while picking up the same cigarrete butt from the gutter. My grandfather was mortified when she ended up repeating that at show and tell one day.
We met at the WorldCon Science Fiction Convention – the 50th anniversary of the first Worldcon. I bought a ticket for the whole shebang and ran into my future wife at the opening night festivities. We kept on running into each other, over and over, without even trying (even though there were other people there we knew and wanted to see, but never did run into). It’s almost enough to make me believe in Fate. The last night, when I said goodbye, she kissed me so I’d remember. I did. The next month we dated once, then she invited me to her group’s yearly Halloween party, where I was accepted by her friends.
We’ve been married for almost eight years now. This constantly amazes me – I hadn’t dated anyone for as long as a year before I met her, and I’d always had incredible difficulties meeting someone who wanted to date me at all, let alone for extended periods. I’d tried all other sorts of gatherings, grouyps, activities, and dating clubs/organizations/singles ads.
Shared interests. That’s the key.
On board the same Naval Vessel. She had to tag-out her equipment for maintenance, and needed someone with access to the fuse boxes to pull the fuses and second check the tags. Kinda nice, especially as she had to climb up on my desk to hang the tags on the breakers also associated with her shop. Since I was always in the area, I always got to pull and check. This was about a year before Desert Storm. After the shooting was over, our Tender (USS Dixon, AS-37) waqs sent to the Gulf to maintain & repair the various ships participating in the tail-end of Desert Storm, and the begining of Southern Watch, so we delayed our wedding until after the cruise, so we got a ‘pre-honeymoon’ on the Navy’s time. Well, OK, it was a working trip, but still… Hit a lot of exotic ports along the way.
Through a mutual friend. I had just broken up with a long-term boyfriend - an ugly, ugly breakup - and a friend at work had just done the same. She was having dinner with a friend to get out of the house after her self-enforced post-breakup social hiatus, and since I was in the same situation she asked if I’d like to join her. So I did. She felt the need to warn me, though: “He’ll probably hit on you though.” He didn’t, but it was a thoroughly pleasant dinner. We left, and my co-worker told me later, “He said after you left, ‘I think I made a good impression, right?’” She half-jokingly told him, “Just because you both like the Simpsons and baseball doesn’t mean she’ll want to date you.” She was right, for a while. I didn’t really want to DATE date anyone. But maybe a month later I sent him a Simpsons-related email, and that started a long series of friendly, very funny email conversations. When I noticed that I was excited to get the return emails from him…well, the rest (save for a few, uh, missteps) is history.
My parents met when my dad was working under his car and saw a pair of legs walk by that he had to meet. So he slid out, jogged up to her and said (I kid you not, they both tell the story), “Excuse me, I’m lost and I can’t find my way to your apartment.”
Richard was living with my friend Laymon-who is gay (this is important to know for later) at the time and it was months before any of us laid eyes on Richard because of the hours he worked. Laymon always referred to things as “ours” as in “mine and Richard’s”. We all just assumed Richard was Laymon’s boyfriend.
Laymon invited us all over to their place for one of his famous gourmet dinners and that’s when we met the roommate. I remember thinking it was a damn shame he was gay. He was polite, sweet, had the most amazing blue eyes and I kept catching him looking at me. Probably wondering what Ken (my escort) saw in me, I figured.
Imagine my surprise when Laymon asked me a few days later if I thought Richard was cute and if I liked him. We went out a few days later and did I find out, much to my delight, just how wrong we all were.
That was almost 5 years ago and I still think he’s one of the best men I’ve ever known. My kids love him, and except for the earring (my idea) even my parents like him-which is saying a lot!
Please bear with me because this is a looooong one.
Funny this thread should start today, but I first met the future Mrs. Hometownboy 35 years ago today, when we were both 16. We were competitors from different high schools (50 miles apart)in a regional speech & essay competition for the Oddfellows & Rebekahs Lodge, in their United Nations Pilgrimage for Youth.
Back in 1966, this was a Very Big Deal because it involved a month-long trip by chartered bus from our location in Oregon to Washington, D.C. for 3 days, a week in New York City, doing many fun things at the UN (including being allowed to sit in the delegate’s seats when they were not in session. I have a great slide of me appearing to represent Upper Volta).
Mrs. Hometownboy won the debate (she memorized her speech, while I used 3x5 cards) but they had an extra slot on the bus, so I was allowed to go by paying my own way (or rather the the folks kicked in the $450 bucks, for which I am eternally grateful).
The 42 kids on the bus, all either 16 or 17 and between our junior and senior years in high school, bonded well enough to stage several reunions, after which we drifted apart.
By the way, at the time the futures Mrs. HTB and I were friendly only. Each of us was seeing somebody back at our respective high schools. I ended up dating my somebody through the senior year and the first two years of college, then ended up marrying her roommate, to everyone’s satisfaction.
Had 2 kids and 24 years with my wonderful wife, and lost her in 1996 to a rare complication of breast cancer called paraneoplastic encephalomyelitis.
In 1995, I received a call from the future Mrs. HTB, who was curious about what had happened to the other kids from the trip. That galvanized me as a serious nostalgic to try and track down those folks. Over the next year, as my wife got sicker and sicker, I used my search as a welcome relief from the stresses of her day to day care. I mailed many, many letters, looked up names on the net, etc. and managed to locate 32 of the 42 originals, extract their subsequent life stories and publish a magazine of our combined exploits in time for the 30th anniversary of the trip. I even managed to get 10 of them to a reunion in my home town, just 2 weeks before my wife passed away.
The rediscovered connection between these people was VERY strong, and a source of great comfort to me in my grief. A number of them living in Oregon and Washington invited me and my family for dinner, for outings in Portland, and gradually brought me back into the world of life.
Eventually, my friendship for the future Mrs. Hometownboy blossomed into romance. She was originally dead set against it, having recently ended a seven-year bad marriage. But with my assurance that I knew how to be happily married, and a compatible mixture of lifestyles and interests, she gradually came to realize that I would not hurt her, but cherish her.
We’ve been married now since September 1998 and are extremely happy. Just last Friday she successfully defended her doctoral dissertation and had it approved with minor editing changes, a project she’d been involved with for 11 years.
After a period of deep darkness, she brought light back into my life, for which we are both eternally grateful.
Thanks for your patience in reading this long ramble.
Hometownboy
My SO and I met in high school junior Gifted and Talented English class. What got us really talking was 7 months after school started I was having huge problems understanding Chemistry. I had heard from mutual friends that he was good at Chem and he was in the Advanced Placement Chem class. So one night I called him up and asked him to help me. Not only was he the first person to be able to explain chem to me so that I could understand it, but he made me have fun doing it! From then on we talked every night and every day at school. A week later, I asked him out. He claims he would have asked me out in a short time if I had given him a chance :D. We’ve been together for 4 years as of yesterday, Sunday, and we decided to get engaged this past December 
Don’t have a ring yet because college is taking all our money right now.
My partner and I met at work in October 1998. I pursued him very gently because he’s shy, and I didn’t want to frighten him. I used to pop in to his office and chat with him a couple of times a day. After a while I progressed to going for lunchtime walks with him and his buddies. We eventually got together in June 1999. After a further few months we decided that we were going to be together for ever. We bought our house in July 2000. Our relationship keeps on getting better.
In 1996 I decided that I hated my job and that I couldn’t get the kind of job I wanted with a communications degree. So, I went back to school to get my MBA. At the end of the first year we had three options, one of which was to spend the summer taking classes in Italy. That sounded great to me.
The school was in Asolo, Italy, a small touristy village in the Dolomites. It was run by Clemson University (my school) but there were also students there from KU, Texas Tech, Alabama, FSU, West Virginia, Missouri, and various Italian Univerities.
So, I’m sitting in my first class (Accounting) on May 27, 1997. I was talking to some friends and looked up and saw the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen. “I haven’t met her yet. I better go say hello.” We had a “Get to know everyone” party the night before and Tracy wasn’t there (she was late coming to Italy due to a friend’s wedding).
I went up and said hi. I had a full beard (well at least 3 weeks worth) and was wearing sandals. She tells me now that I looked like such a hippie. We talked a bit and found out that our backgrounds were similar. Soon there after I shaved and made myself more “presentable.”
One of the perks to this school was that we got to travel on the weekends. So we traveled together with a group, at first, and as time passed, we traveled just with each other. All of Italy, Barcelona, Munich, Zurich, and many other locations we saw together. Two and a half months later, we were inseparable. But, CIMBA (the school)ended and we had to go back to our respective universities.
She was in Lawrence, KS and I was in Clemson, SC. But we kept in touch through e-mail, phone calls (really big bills), and we would fly to see each other about every three weeks.
So, to make a long story short (I know, I know, too late), we both graduated, moved to be with each other, and we were married September 23, 2000. The way we met kind of made our honeymoon location anti-climactic.
In the Fall of 1993 I was going through a messy, difficult breakup with a fellow PhD student I was sharing a house with. We were still living together and he’d met someone else and lord, it was hard. We had all the same friends, none of whom know we’d taken up with each other. I had nowhere to turn for relief or sympathy. I had to get out and meet some new people. I answered a personal ad, the kind in a monthly newspaper that required a written response (no phoning, no immediate hook-ups–I thought this would cut down on the desperate oddballs). The guy responds to my letter, we meet. He seemed okay, but who can tell the first meeting? It takes time to really get to know someone, especially someone as shy as him. Problem is, the bastard never calls again. I figured oh well, dumb jerk, who needed him anyway.
I survive the breakup and several more relationships. In the Spring of '96 I find myself single and bored and looking to expand my circle. My male roommate places a personal ad for himself in that same magazine, and I decide to read the ones in that issue, even though I’ve sworn off personal ads after that blow-off. I see one that looks promising. Decide to give it a shot; writing a letter, etc. The guy calls me to set up a meeting. he starts to tell me about himself and it’s all sounding familiar. Suddenly I realize IT’S THE SAME GUY. We couldn’t believe it. I was all for skipping the meeting–I said “you’ve already met me once, and nothing clicked, so we can just save ourselves some time and forget it.” But he said we may as well meet, nothing to lose.
Clicked this time. We started to see movies together, I took him to some parties. Then we fell in love. I still can’t believe I met him twice this way. Married, have a kid now.
Just a week after our 17th anniversary, so pretty good timing.
I was the department head of a large Midwest high school’s English department and I was up at the school about two or three weeks before the start of school making sure that all of the department supplies had arrived and moving them and the books to the correct rooms so my teachers would have what they needed when school began. This can be extremely dirty work so I was dressed in my lawn work clothes.
While I was moving boxes back and forth in the English wing, in walks this very attractive young woman who announced that she was one of the new English teachers and needed my help getting her room organized. I followed her and we went to her room and she had me move this desk here or that box there. She was quite sweet about it, but it was very clear she thought I was one of the school’s custodians. After we got done moving everything around (at least three times. I think everything ended up where it all started. She hasn’t changed in this respect in the last 17 years), she pulled out some money and offered me a tip for being such a helpful man. I told her that I knew she was a first year teacher and knew how tight it could be for first year teachers in regard to money so I refused to take her money.
I did, however, mention that her department head was in the school somewhere and that she might want to meet him. She said she did, and we spent the next 10 or 20 minutes looking for him, suprisingly with no luck. I then suggested we go to the school office because they might know his whereabouts.
She agreed and with me standing right next to her she asked the school secretaries where her department head might be. They first looked at her as if she were crazy and then broke up laughing. When she demanded to know what was so funny, they pointed out the scruffy guy standing next to her (whom they had seen carrying her boxes up and down the hall for over an hour) was her department head.
She has long contended that it was then she decided to marry me just to pay me back for the embarrassment of that day.
Dating in the orthodox Jewish world can be a little more unusual than in the “outside” world. That being said, sit down and relax . . .
I wasn’t really getting anywhere with the dates I was having. Lots of people were setting me up, but the most I ever dated anyone was about 5 or 6 times before we stopped seeing each other. Plus, since there is a much larger Jewish community in New York than in Baltimore, I was spending alot of time traveling back and forth. And, it gets depressing after a while.
My roommate at the time had been going out on dates that were set up by a shadchan - a matchmaker. He kept bugging me to call her, and I kept making up excuse after excuse why I wouldn’t. Finally one Sunday morning I had the white pages open on my bed, so out of the blue I looked up the shadchan’s phone number and called. I went to meet her the following Sunday morning.
After a long discussion, she told me she had someone in mind for me, but she had to find out if this lady was seeing anyone. The really cool thing is, the shadchan had never met her! She knew about the lady because the lady’s friend’s sister had boarded for a year in the shadchan’s house in Baltimore. However, they had never met.
So anyway, we finally met and went out at the end of August, and got engaged on Thanksgiving day. The shadchan finally met the future Mrs. KVS a few days later. We got married the following June. That was almost 11 years and 3 kids ago.
I met my SO through the internet (we’re both total geeks and couldn’t care less if we tried :)). I put an ad up at aol.com personals, and as a Subject line, I wrote “Female: Mostly Harmless” just on a whim. I have to sort of believe in fate, too; turns out that my boy is a huge HHGTTG fan, and had to contact me after seeing that. Turns out, we had just about everything else in common too, and we celebrated our 1 year anniversary on Sunday (and got officially engaged!)
::Heavy sigh…::
I’d seen my husband around the office (he was hired two weeks after I was) but we had no contact at all until 1994, when my company was undergoing the first of several painful reorganizations. Everyone who survived it became pretty close, standing in the hallways bitching and passing rumors around as fast as possible. He was the most cynical, sarcastic and funny guy around, so I started chasing him. Friends took me out for my 30th birthday, and he suggested the restaurant. Discovering that he liked Asian foods, I invited him out to Malaysian restaurant. 3 months later, he finally kissed me . I consider that day our first date, tho he tracks it back to the Malaysian restaurant. We celebrated our first anniversary in January, and we’re expecting a baby in November.
Love a man with a vicious sense of humor.
Arrived in Jacksonville in Feb, left for Sicily in April, returned to Jax in Oct. I wanted to meet people, so I decided to take sailing lessons. Steve was the instructor.
We had 2 weeks of classroom work before being allowed to board a boat. The evening he was teaching us how to raise the sails and how to set the rigging, he admonished us not to let the sheets fall in the water. (For non-sailors, the sheets are the lines that control the sails) I immediately responded that nobody likes wet sheets. He laughed and I knew then he was worth getting to know better.
Two days later, we actually sailed - 4 to a boat - and I was in his boat. Our group spent several hours on the water, taking turns at the helm and handling the sails. We all went to lunch together, and before the afternoon was over, Steve asked me out for that evening. We went to see The Big Chill, and went walking on the beach the next day. That night, he told me that I’d marry him. Told, not asked.
Four weeks later, we went to the courthouse in Green Cove Springs during lunch and did the deed. Unfortunately, we had to get back to work because a kid who worked for me was being court-martialled and I had to be there.
Anyway, it’s been 17 years, one kid, 8 assorted pets, 6 houses, 11 boats… what a ride it’s been!!! I think I got me a good one.
I met my hubby August of 1982. We had bookkeeping class together in high school. Because we were placed in alphabetical order starting at the back and going from one corner to the other he ended up sitting two chairs in front of me. (Poor Kathy sitting in the middle of us.) There were nothing but girls sitting around him too, so I guess I didn’t see anything unusual about him talking to me a lot. He would turn around and talk to me and the teacher would tell MEto leave him alone. (Teacher’s pet) Who was bothering whom, lady? He still laughs about how he would get me into trouble in class. Anyway, he says he was smitten with me from the first time he saw me. We didn’t date until I started college.
Right here on this very message board.
I first noticed her way back in September '00 when she was a newbie and said this, then it progressed to this (see links in my OP there for even more background), then we started e-mailing, then moved on to “real” letters when she was grounded from the computer.
Oddly enough, we’ll finally get to be together IRL on or about the 1-year anniversary of her registering here. (she’s coming down sometime in August)
In an art gallery, 1999. I was looking to buy some paintings after moving to Singapore, she was working on a painting in the gallery as the resident artist. I liked her work, and she agreed to visit my office for some advice on paintings and then later also my home for the same thing. One thing led to another and before we knew it we were much more than artist and customer. Next week we will celebrate our first wedding anniversary. Fate rules.