Valentine’s Day 2022 Love Stories: How Patch Readers Met

ACROSS AMERICA — Dating websites that debuted in the mid-1990s and subsequent dating apps may have “gamified” how couples get together, but many who shared their stories with Patch for Valentine’s Day met traditionally.

For some, it was love at first sight. Others were fixed up. Some found love after rekindling childhood friendships.

Here are some of their stories:

Pearl River, New York, Patch reader Lisa Dixon met her husband six years ago on a dating site. After three months on the site, she took a break. When she checked messages a month later, she was intrigued by one from a man she later learned not only lived in the same town but also on the same street.

She met his family — his daughter, his parents, his grandchild — before their official first date.

“We hit it off!” Dixon wrote on Facebook. “We are so much alike, we have grown adult kids, and we made each other laugh. We both knew at that moment that this was it!”

Four days later, he proposed, a ring in his hand.

“I thought, this is crazy,” she wrote, “but it was either gonna work or not.”

Nine months later, they were married. It was a second marriage for both.

“We are the happiest we’ve ever been,” Dixon wrote.

They joke they’ve never had a fight — “not even one,” Dixon wrote.

“We tackle problems together, we love, laugh and share the most beautiful life together,” she wrote. “I am so lucky to have found my forever.”

Chat Room Romance Blooms

Ray Herrmann’s story of online dating is old school.

He and his wife met in an “AOL 50’s love chat room,” Herrmann wrote on the Toms River, New Jersey, Patch Facebook page. They discovered they’d graduated from the same high school a year apart, but never knew one another, and lived just a few miles from each other — Herrmann in Toms River and his future wife in Brick.

They’ve been happily married 22 years.

“She’s my best friend,” he wrote. “When we finally met face to face, she had a twinkle in her eye and a smile that grabbed my heart.”

A favorite line of Herrmann’s, a frequent Amazon customer: “People always ask where I got this or that, I reply online, I get everything online, even my beautiful wife.”

Love On The Dial

It wasn’t a dating website that drew Glen Ellyn, Illinois, Patch reader Kelly McCullough Mika and her husband together in the '90s, but rather a radio station date line.

“You would call into a number and answer questions about yourself. Much like the dating apps today,” she wrote on Facebook. “The computer would give you access to matching profile messages, and you had the opportunity to leave a voicemail for anyone of your matches.”

She weeded through a few messages and “decided to take a chance” and call one of her matches. They spoke on the phone over the next several days, then arranged an in-person meeting. They celebrated their 25th anniversary on Feb. 8.

Opening Night First Kiss

Murietta, California, Patch reader Amy Thomas met her husband when they were seniors in high school and paired in auditions for “Arsenic and Old Lace” to read the parts of the romantic leads.

“We were cast as fiancées. We started dating the night before the play opened. Our first kiss was onstage in front of an audience,” Thomas wrote on Facebook. “We both forgot our lines and basically ruined that performance.”

Seven years later, he conspired with the members of the marching band she directed. After their championship performance, band members unfurled a giant banner reading, “Will you marry me?”

They remain married 13 years later and are the parents of three boys.

Thumbing A Ride

Katy Anderson Sahr and her husband married at 20 after meeting on a blind date; they’ve been married 52 years. He was a serviceman, and her friend’s dad picked him up when he was thumbing a ride back to the naval base at Quonset, Rhode Island, bought dinner for him and then asked Sahr to show him around town.

“With the help of some buddies, we made our way to Boston. After a fun night of talking and sharing future plans we went to go back to my house via the subway,” Sahr wrote on the Concord, New Hampshire, Patch Facebook page. “Problem was, subway was closed. With only a few bucks for cab fare, we finagled a driver to take us as close to my home as possible. We happily walked the last few miles home.”

When they got home in the wee morning hours, and waiting for them were her “worried parents” and her friend’s dad, who’d set the whole thing up.

“I laugh about it now, but just imagine how worried my parents were at 2:00 in the morning and finding out the truth about hitchhiking blind date,” she wrote. “Safe to say, we survived and our relationship grew, married at 20 and married still.”

Love On Capitol Hill

La Grange, Illinois, Patch reader Justin Hanson said his future wife, Lindsay, and a couple of her friends came away from a 2006 tour of the speaker of the House’s office “literally less informed.”

It was the first day of his internship in the U.S. House of Representatives internship, and a quiet day. Three women about his age approached, one of them with pretty, hazel-colored, almond-shaped eyes. He hadn’t been in the Capitol since a family vacation more than a decade before, but when they asked for a tour, he responded “with a very confident, ‘Sure, no problem!’

“I spent the next 15 or so minutes showing these women around the Speaker's office, and I literally made everything up as I went along — no idea what I was talking about,” he wrote.

The woman with the beautiful eyes smiled at him, gave him a hug and said that she worked for a senator.

“Like a moonstruck idiot, I did not ask for any of Lindsay's information,” Hanson wrote. “Not a last name, not her number, not her AIM screen name, nothing. It wasn't until she was gone that I realized what I'd done.”

He spent the next year looking for her, unsuccessfully. The majority party flipped in 2008, and his office was moved to one he would share with another person. It was Lindsay.

“We were both surprised, and had been thinking about each other for a whole year.”

He didn’t forget to get her contact information. He “asked her out properly,” he wrote. He got down on one knee and proposed to her in the Capitol Rotunda. They’ve been married 12 years and have four children.

A Circle Perfectly Closed

Levittown, Pennsylvania, Patch reader Kevin Hill was a fifth grader when he met his wife. She and her sister were the new kids in school. He was shy, “yet a class clown,” and he made her laugh. They became quick friends.

“Her kindness and gentle heart always shined bright compared to all the others,” Hill wrote on Facebook. “And my feelings grew for her even though I was just a kid.”

They went through 9/11 together that year with the help of a teacher they both liked, Mr. C., whose dedication to his students was “equal to that of father and son,” Hill wrote. They remained close through eighth grade, when her family moved across the state. He kissed her goodbye in their middle school courtyard between classes.

“We were both crying,” he wrote. “MySpace wasn't big just yet, and she didn't know her new address or phone number so our relationship came to an end. Years go by and we find each other on Facebook. We start out as friends all over again. Like we never missed a beat.”

They began dating again seven years ago, got engaged in 2018 and married in 2020.

“Our son now attends school in Levittown and one of the teachers he has is Mr. C, the teacher we had all those years ago back in 5th grade,” he wrote. “It's been a blast and I would do it all over again.”

They ‘Met’ In The Womb

You could say Mary-Theresa Delaney met her husband when they were both still in the womb. Her parents and in-laws lived on the same street, their mothers were pregnant together, and they went to doctor appointments together.

In fact, Delaney wrote on the Bel Air, Maryland, Patch Facebook page, “his mother actually called my mother to drive her to the hospital when she was in labor with him, but my mother was due around then too, so she found another neighbor to drive my mother-in-law.”

Delaney and her future husband were born three days apart. Her future in-laws moved shortly after, but the mothers stayed in touch. Once, on a visit, “my mother very boldly asked my now husband if he had a girlfriend because I was available if he didn't.”

They dated long-distance for a year before she moved to be closer to him. This year is their 24th anniversary.

More Love Stories

Hauppauge, New York, Patch reader Noreen Feliciano Hummel was eight years into her second kidney transplant when it failed and she had to return to dialysis three times a week while waiting for a new kidney.

“The nurse who took care of me is now my husband,” she wrote. “I called him after I received my third transplant, and we’ve been together ever since. 17 years together; 15 years married.”

Cheshire, Connecticut, Patch reader Tamara Klatsky Epstein met her future husband in third grade Sunday school class. They lost touch when they when they went to college but reconnected before graduation when a mutual friend arranged a reunion of Sunday school classmates.

“We are the first couple to go through the religious school and go on to be married,” she wrote, noting that 31 years later, they’re still happy together.

Allison Finn can appropriately sing the Jell-O jingle on their anniversary. “I met my husband at a jello wrestling night at my high school,” she wrote on the Berkeley Township, New Jersey, Patch Facebook page. “He was there with his friends.”

They married four years later. “Been together forever,” she wrote, adding the internet shorthand “lol.”

“When I tell people we met at the police department, they always assume we were in trouble,” Banning-Beaumont, California, Patch reader Maggie Racadio wrote on Facebook.

They weren’t in lockup together. He was a police officer, and she was a dispatcher.

“It took a while,” she wrote, “but after I played an April Fools joke on him, involving the cow on top of El Rancho, he decided he liked my personality and the rest is history.”

Puyallup, Washington, Patch reader Darice Gamache's 32-year marriage had just ended in divorce when her friends “dragged” her out to hear a band they liked.

“The lead singer asked if anyone was single because the base player is,” Gamache wrote. “I waved my hand, and at the end of the night, my ‘friends’ teased me to go ask him for his number.

“Four years later, we are still together,” Gamache wrote, “but the band is not.”

The first time Lindenhurst, New York, Patch reader Jay Deco met his love Frankie Soto, Soto flipped him off as they were dropping their kids off at elementary school.

“I was going to help his child cross the street because he just double parks and blocks traffic while he watches,” Deco wrote. “I waved ‘hi,’and he gave me the finger. We’ve been together ever since.”

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