We’ve tried to tell a short version of this story, but there’s really no way to cut it down. It took us four years to actually meet, but it was well worth the wait! Below is an account of how it all happened, starting with a JDate email back in August of 2005.

August 2005: David saw Jessica’s profile on JDate and was excited to find a Jewish woman who was into the outdoors. He emailed her. Jessica looked at his profile, but was deterred because he lived on Bainbridge Island (a 30-minute ferry ride away from Seattle). Plus, she had just starting dating someone else. She wrote back to tell him she was unavailable.

September 2005 – August 2008: David’s version: He traveled to Africa, where he had another relationship and volunteered for the Jane Goodall Institute for one year. Jessica’s version: David couldn’t stop thinking about her (even though they’d never met). Despite the chimpanzees, somehow he just couldn’t get Jessica out of his head.

August 2008: David returned from Africa and had lunch with his Aunt Sally, who convinced him to go back on JDate. David saw Jessica’s profile and remembered her, but when he clicked on her, her profile was gone. Bummed, but resourceful, he remembered that Jessica had given him her personal email address during their interactions on JDate. He also realized they had a mutual friend (Danny), but didn’t yet have the guts to write to her.

August 2009: After a year of thinking about contacting Jessica, David finally mustered up the nerve to write to her. Jessica had to dig back into her memory to remember who David was. She finally remembered and was intrigued by his email, but alas, she was in another relationship. Distracted, she mentioned to their mutual friend, Danny, that David had written to her. Danny responded, “David is a GREAT guy and a really good basketball player.” Jessica was a bit stumped by this comment, considering David’s apparent height in the pictures, but she took Danny’s comments as truth. She wrote back to David but indicated that she was still unavailable. By this point, David was moving on.

November 14 2009: Sodom and Gomorrah party

David and Jessica independently went to a party sponsored by the Jewish community in Seattle (incidentally, the party had a “Sodom and Gomorrah” theme). David spotted Jessica across the dance floor; Jess spotted David across the dance floor (even though they’d never met). David thought he noticed Jess checking him out. They both wanted to introduce themselves, but the music was so loud that they didn’t think they’d have a meaningful introduction. They both left the party without saying a word to each other.

David returned home from the evening and told his four female housemates about Jess. They all agreed that he shouldn’t write to her for the third time for fear of appearing like a stalker.

Jess returned home from the evening and knew the ball was in her court after already rejecting David twice over four years (and by this time she was single)! She took the initiative and wrote him an email. Overjoyed, David eagerly responded. They finally met in person a few days later, and the rest is history…

We knew from our first date that we were kindred spirits. We spent the first few months of our relationship humbled by the connection we shared. We had both independently wanted to volunteer in a developing country, so ten months into our relationship we traveled to India to volunteer through the American Jewish World Service for six months. This experience confirmed what we already knew — that we were life partners. David proposed with his mother’s ring on the roof of the Taj Lake Palace Hotel in Udaipur in September 2010, and we were married one year later.

We still both marvel at the amount of time it took us to actually meet. Timing is everything, and persistence pays off!

Jessica and David
Seattle, Washington