October 3, 1999: It was a gloomy and rainy Sunday. I had finally put away my pager and said yes to meeting a stranger for the first time face-to-face. It had to be for lunch of course, as you never know how dangerous a person may be! Well, my date was dangerous… as he never let go of me! Fourteen years and two amazing kids later, I married my soul mate and it’s all thanks to JDate! Here’s how it all happened:

I was 20 and procrastinating on my college homework by browsing the web. I came across an ad for a Jewish singles site in Chicago. I was curious to see familiar faces of boys I may know; actually meeting someone online never even crossed my mind. Eagerly, I went to the site to look, but there was a catch… I had to create a profile in order to do so. What girl has that stopped before? So, I went ahead with answering some general questions, but wait… this was taking way too long, and all I wanted was to see some cute boys! I quickly started saying yes/no to questions without paying attention to how I was answering them. Whew! Done! Profile created! No photos (it was 1999, who had electronic photos? I surely didn’t!) and very dry answers, but my profile was up! I browsed the site, eventually closed the window, and then forgot it ever happened.

Weeks later, I receive an email. It said, “Hi, saw your profile on JDate, do you have a picture?” This is how our email exchange started and it kept going for weeks. So why did this nice, cute guy notice my no-picture profile? Well, it turns out I happened to use all the right words he always wanted in a woman, such as: likes to ski, plays tennis, roller-blades, etc. Well guess what?! I didn’t know how to do any of that, but that’s history now! Now I have the man of my dreams and I know how to ski, play tennis and roller blade!

We just celebrated our 12th wedding anniversary. We have two wonderful boys (a 4-year-old and an 8-year-old) and live in Lincoln Park, IL.

Inna and Edward
Chicago, Illinois