I might as well tell the story.
In the fall of 2004 (junior year of college), a female friend of mine introduced me to a friend of hers, via online chat. We got to talking through October and November, speaking a few times a week on the phone (I racked up $398 in overage charges on my parents' cell phone plan, and did so in a month ... man, was I red-faced when I wrote my Dad the check to repay him).
Anyway, at the time, I was going to school and also working at an independent video game store. At the time, my family was in the process of moving to north-central Wisconsin, while my college and job were in eastern Iowa, and my college's Christmas break was five weeks long. I couldn't go home, and the dorms were closed. I was told that if I took five weeks off, my job would not be there when I came back in January. So, I needed to stay in town.
Well, I needed money, so I called around, and I found a motel about a half-mile away from my video game store that would let me rent a room for five weeks, $550 total. Awesome deal. (It really was -- there was wireless Internet, cable TV, and even though I asked them to skip the room, the housecleaning service took care of the room every single day. Left them a hell of a tip at the end.) So, during that five-week exile in the Best Inn, Katy (that new lady friend of mine) decided she would do the 90-minute drive from Madison down to Dubuque and finally meet me face-to-face. She knocked on my hotel room door, we sat down and chatted for a while, then went out for dinner and a movie, she went back home to Madison, and we've now been married for almost four years.
