Kevin and I met online -- we chatted one night for 6 hours, and by the end of the chat, we realized we had much in common, as well as a few problems. The biggest problem was the most obvious one and the hardest to overcome -- he was in the Air Force and stationed in Japan, while I was living with my parents in Washington State. The miles between Japan and Washington made a relationship seem out of the question. And yet, we clicked....

Kevin got leave a few months after our first chat, and he arranged to fly out to Seattle to meet me in person. We spent four days together and at the end of those four days, we had gone from 'on-line romance' to 'real-time love.' When he boarded the plane for home, he asked me if I would wait for him. I didn't hesitate at all in my answer -- for this wonderful man, I would wait.

We spent hours online after that, chatting, sending emails, making plans for a future together. He was returning to the states in eight months, and we planned to be together then. He proposed on the phone one night and I accepted, knowing that my parents would not be pleased -- at 26, I had already had one disastrous marriage, and my parents would not look favorably on marriage to a man I had spent so little time with. Kevin had it easier -- his parents didn't know how we met, and didn't find out until after the wedding.

We announced our engagement and his parents offered to have the wedding for us. We accepted and set it for April, two weeks after his return to the states. After their initial shock, my parents accepted our news and made plans to travel to Ohio, his home state, to attend the wedding. My friends were dubious about how solid a marriage made on the 'net would be, and I was teased mercilessly by friends and co-workers. But surprisingly enough, I never felt a moment's doubt -- I simply knew that this was the man I was supposed to spend my life with. We spent a grand total of 15 days face to face before we said our vows.

It was not always easy to wait, of course -- I would see couples walking hand in hand and miss the physical part of the relationship. Holidays were hard -- not being with the man I was engaged to for Christmas or New Years. It was also hard to have only a computer and the occasional phone call as our means to communicate -- bad days when I needed a shoulder to cry on and that one shoulder I needed most was thousands of miles away. And the constant worry, the fretting -- was he OK? What if something happened to him and I lost him forever? Trying to be upbeat so that our time was spent on anything but how far apart we were -- so that the hour of chat wasn't spent being depressed and longing for each other. Trying to convince my friends and family that what we had was real, not just a passing crush.

People tend to look at me funny when I say that I met my husband online, because most people think that people looking for love online must not be able to find it in real life. In reality, I wasn't looking for anything, just a friendly chat, and Kevin is a very normal, well adjusted guy -- just a little shy at first. But we met, we connected and fell in love, and we committed ourselves to each other despite the distance. One thing we have learned from our unusual courtship is to talk our problems out -- with nothing more than a computer screen keeping us in touch, we became experts at communicating with each other. Another thing we have learned is to never, ever take each other for granted -- the long wait to be together makes us appreciate each other much more than if we'd been in the same town together.