mandymag.com

My husband Jeffrey and I celebrate our three year wedding anniversary today! We met on match.com in 2003.

In the 4 1/2 years Jeffrey and I have been together, the Red Sox have won the World Series 2 times, the Pats have won the Super Bowl a 3rd time. We’ve traveled to Italy, Florida, Las Vegas, New York, Maine, and Canada. We bought a home in New Hampshire and I changed jobs. Most recently, Jeff is recovering from a terrible auto accident where he broke his hip, knee and leg.

The vows we made to one another for better and for worse, in good times and in bad, for richer and for poorer, and in sickness and in health have all played a part in 4 1/2 years together. I wouldn’t trade the last 4 1/2 years for anything in the world!

I was pleased to find our success story, that Jeffrey submitted, is still out on match.com

On March 24, 2003, a week before my membership on Match.com was scheduled to lapse, I arrived home to find an email message from a woman who commented on the picture posted with my profile. It was a picture of me at Piazza San Marco in Venice, Italy, surrounded by birds—lots and lots of birds! The emailer commented that she loved the picture, loved my smile and inquired as to the origin of the picture. I peeked at her profile because she was an attractive woman who was well educated and we had much in common. I was afraid, however, that maybe she lived a little too far away. In spite of the distance, I responded: I figured nothing ventured, nothing gained, plus there was only a week left on my membership. Why pass up an opportunity to converse, right?

Six weeks, 29 emails (more than 70 pages total length) and 27 telephone calls later, we met for the first time. Six months later, on November 15, 2003, in New York City, on a horse-drawn carriage on the outskirts of Times Square, “MandyMagnolia” agreed to become Mrs. “ConcordTeddyBear.” We will be married on November 6, 2004 and on the first anniversary of our engagement, we shall enter Piazza San Marco together on our honeymoon. We will feed the pigeons together, take pictures of one another with the birds on our head and on our shoulders and in our arms and clustered all around our feet… and we will laugh and smile. I will remember that it was that exact setting some three years earlier that made me laugh and made me smile the smile that drew my love to me.

How ironic that is. When my dear friend cajoled me into joining Match.com for a brief trial, I thought online introduction services were for the birds. Well, my love story is for the birds figuratively and literally.

Many may balk at the concept of online dating, however, I’m a firm believer! Happy Anniversary baby!

tags: mandy magnolia and concord teddy bear, match.com is for the birds , match.com success story, online dating success