I'm so Famous, Part 2

This is really a continuation of Famous Part 1. To remind you, I played on the computer a lot, loved the chat rooms, and was heavily involved in an online LDS community. I was still doing that when I went to Ricks College, chatting plenty with my pals in the youth group. During Christmas break, I decided I was maybe old enough to see what was going on in the singles group. Lo and behold, they were talking about setting up cool things like we had with the youth, monthly meetings and the like, but no one knew what to do. So I told them what to do, but no one would do it. I volunteered (hello, it wasn't hard). In the process, Jamie e-mailed asking for information and I wrote back. We e-mailed a few times during the next month mainly about that, but nothing too exciting.

My birthday is in January, and I was surprised when he sent me a Happy Birthday (he'd seen it on my AOL profile). I sent back a thanks, and mentioned I would be visiting family in Ogden the next weekend. He wrote back and said he would be in down from Utah State to visit his grandfather in Ogden. I had met some of the kids in the youth group and it was great knowing who I was talking to, so I asked if he would be interested in meeting, not thinking of romance, just fun. He said sure, so we arranged to meet at my aunt's house where I was staying. I don't remember a whole lot from that, but he never made it to his grandfather's.

My ride back to Ricks was meeting me at a friend's apartment at Utah State the next day, so Jamie stopped by while I was there to say hi. He couldn't stay long because he was going on a date. I attribute that to the fact that when I got back to Ricks I e-mailed my mom and said, "Nice guy, but no chemistry." (She still has the e-mail.)

Over the next week there was a lot of e-mailing, probably even a phone call. That weekend he drove to Ricks to see me. The next weekend we met at my aunt's again. A few months later we were engaged, and a few months after that, married!

Given the newness of this online thing, let alone online dating, we were on the front page of the Times News in Twin Falls, Idaho and the San Ramon Valley Times in San Ramon, California. Though I do say we weren't really online daters, because there was no romantic interest until we met in person, if then, given the whole 'chemistry' e-mail.

If you can't read the articles, all the better. They were both terrible. I have a hard time believing reporters because they were pretty creative with something as simple as two wonderful young people finding each other online and ending up married. The Twin Falls one has a quote from Jamie saying the wrong city where we were engaged and says Orson Scott Card gave me a computer (it was a modem). The San Ramon reporter was feeling cheesy, including things like "love at first 'byte,'" calling my family and friends in Idaho "kin" (i.e. hicks), a quote from me saying that one of the three things we talked about online was Mickey Mouse (I'm a fan, but really), and a quote from Jamie's mom mentioning Mickey Mouse as one his three interests (eh?). You'd have thought Disney was hurting that year and asked the newspaper to advertise.




It was actually 14 years ago two days ago that we met in person. Happy Meeting Anniversary! I'm sure you would all like to hear Jamie's side of the story now. Jamie?

Interesting to note, the Times News article came out on June 24th, we were married July 1st, the San Ramon Times article came out July 15th, and the New Era article from Famous 1 was in September issue. Quite the big famous summer all around.

Straight from Newsies, "If you're in the papes, you're famous!" Don't worry, it didn't go to my head. I had all that hair back then to stop it. ;)