Same thing here.
I was working for the Commerce Department in Washington DC in 1986 and routinely picked up the City Paper . I was an avid reader of the column the year or so that I worked there. I then moved back to Richmond, but the local weekly didn’t carry it. I found the first book in a college bookstore and bought the others as they came out. In early 2000 I was trying to figure out why white noise tends to help you sleep and thought “Uncle Cecil will know…but how do I write to him.” Voila - here I am.
Mr. Congo used to read Cecil’s stuff during work and one day he found one he thought I’d be interested in. I ended up reading everything I could find. One day, he pointed out the threadspotting and I ended up being an unregistered Lurker for about 3 months before I saw something I wanted to reply to. So, it’s all thanks to Mr. Congo - a man who has never posted or Lurked. He does like the threads I read to him though. His favorite is Master Wang-Ka’s story about Jehovah’s Witnesses. He nearly pissed himself on that one 
A good friend of mine showed me a thread that had come up when he was researching what Cams to get for his Civic… I’m not sure how, since the vast majority of gear heads here on the Dope are Domestic or Euro folks (no love for the Japanese 4 banger… sigh ) but he showed me the thread.
I backed out to see what else they were talking about, and got hooked.
Other than a few hiatus’, I’ve been here ever since.
I was given an SD book 1984 as a gift.
Browsed it a bit on AOL until I got a “real” ISP.
My husband pointed me in the direction of the website a few years ago.
My friend Patrick gave me the first book as a birthday gift, and he told me that current columns are posted online. I’ve tried to get him to start reading the SDMB because he’d fit in perfectly here. He refuses on the grounds that he’ll get sucked in and “waste” too much time here, which is likely.
My sister gave me a copy of the first book when I was in college in the mid-eighties. I was going to school just west of downtown Chicago, where the Reader was readily available, so I started picking it up every week. I found the column on-line in the late 90s, and joined the boards some time later when something in thread-spotting caught my eye.
I used to lurk over at the FOAF message board and linked on to a very funny rant about a guy waiting for his order at KFC. I have been trying to track it down lately- does anyone remember it by any chance? Anyhoo, I was hooked and have been here (mostly lurking!) ever since. I love you guys to bits! 
I used to read it in the SLUG (Salt Lake Underground) back when i lived in Utah. At one point I was just wasting time trying to avoid work and looked to see if it was on the inter.net
and it was!
I read the articles at first, then i lurked for about a year before signing on.
EnderW24 got me on the boards.
I’ve never read Cecil’s column.
'Bout 19 years ago, I spent a summer vacation working with my cousin in a photo shop in downtown Chicago. There was a big customer rush in the morning and another in the evening, leaving us time in the middle of the day to relax and chat. He introduced me to the Straight Dope (for which I am eternally grateful) and one particular Q&A caught my attention. I was majoring in physics at the time, and when I read this classic (as it was published in the first compilation):
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a1_122.html
I was hooked. I’ve been a fan ever since.
I stumbled across the Straight Dope while searching for a few answers to questions, one of which led to the Archives. After poking around on the site a bit, I ventured into the Message Board, and was compelled by the wonderful stories of WallyM7. He died very shortly after I started visiting the board, which was a terrible loss, and I felt touched by him, even having only read the boards for a couple weeks.
Jman