Dear JDate,

I decided to try JDate on the recommendation of a friend. I was never one to try things like this, but I realized I needed to be more pro-active in terms of the whole dating thing. Over the first 3 months of JDate, I met some nice guys, had some fun dates, but nothing special…until I met Jason one night in the JDate chat room.

He is from the Philadelphia area, and I live in Queens, NY. Despite our distance, we decided to meet for lunch the next day, as he had to be in Manhattan on business. We definitely had a connection and hugged each other good-bye three times before I returned to work. He stayed around until I got off work, and we had another date later that night. That was Oct. 22, 2000. We fell for each other almost immediately and spent the next few months traveling back and forth between PA and NY on weekends or during the week if we could. Jason surprised me with a proposal on June 24, 2001, the day before he was going to give up his apartment in PA and “officially” move in with me. We were both 29.

Being two states apart, we never would have met without JDate. He also joined on the advice of a friend, and I was actually his first “JDate.” We luckily were in the chat room at the same time, because we would never have come up in each other’s local “searches.” Every day, we appreciate how lucky we were to have met, that fateful night, in the JDate chat room. Who knew? So thank you for giving people this option…a way to meet others whose paths would never have crossed.

Our wedding was October 6, 2002, and we could not be happier.

Debra & Jason
Queens, New York and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania