Uber, World of Warcraft & More: The Most Surprising Places These Real-Life Couples First Met
In a world where everyone seems to be pairing up with the help of dating apps, it’s becoming increasingly rare to meet a couple whose love story began sans swiping right. But there is hope! There are plenty of coupled-up pairs whose initial meetings went down in really unexpected places (i.e. during an UberPOOL ride, a round of World of Warcraft and more).
Tamara Langman and John Bentley are just two of the many couples who met while playing the multiplayer fantasy game. In 2011, the New York Times interviewed the couple, who first began chatting via the game’s messaging and voice communication service for two months before meeting in real life in Santa Barbara, where they currently reside. They have been together since 2009.
I returned to England afterwards feeling very love sick
Okay, so this isn’t so strange. Plenty of people form connections while lifting weights or running on the treadmill, right? At least that was the case for Stephanie Hughes and Joe Keith, who met and wed at a Planet Fitness.
“I was using the bosu ball, and he asked if I was using a piece of the equipment, and I looked up and was like, ‘No,’ ” Hughes recalled, with a dreamy look on her face, in the couple’s wedding video. “I was so nervous!”
“I definitely was like, ‘Oh my god she’s gorgeous,’ and thought I should go say something,” Keith added. “Right when we first met I was like, oh she’s so awesome, so I guess you could say it was love at first sight.”
Taking care of your dental hygiene not only improves your health, but may also lead to a romantic connection, according to Facebook user Melanie G. “At the oral surgeon, both getting our wisdom teeth removed,” she wrote of where she met her beau. “Dated for 8-9 months at the time and recently reconnected again some 12 years later…”
After leaving a bad date, Hayley Mitchell decided to order an Uber to go back home, but accidentally ordered an UberPOOL rather than a private one. While waiting for her ride to arrive, Mitchell got a notification that “Charlie,” whom she assumed was her driver, was on his way. When the car pulled up, Mitchell realized the “Charlie” in question was another rider, Charlie Algar, prompting her to exclaim, “Oh, you’re Charlie.”
Although Jackie Holmes passed away in 2013, Steve Bunce aims to keep his beloved’s memory alive by sharing their adorable meet-cute, which occurred due to their shared love for Barbra Streisand
Mitchell decided to have some fun with her fellow rider after Algar was under the impression they had met before. “I went along with it and said, ‘I can’t believe you don’t remember me’, and he looked very pale all of a sudden,” Mitchell recounted. “He went on for about 10 minutes listing all these places we might have known each other from.”
After Mitchell admitted to the prank, Algar found it funny enough to ask for her number at the end of his ride. They began dating and moved in together almost a year later.
“In 1975, we exchanged addresses through a Barbara Streisand fan club and began writing each other. Together we had a combined collection of 15,000 pictures,” revealed Bunce, whose love story was featured in The Way We Met Instagram account. “We were pen pals for five years before ever meeting in person.”
He continued: “I lived in England at the time and she lived in Brooklyn. The first time I met Jackie in person was when I flew to New York in September of 1980. The second time I went to visit her was in December over the Christmas holiday, and that’s when I asked her to be Austriaco hembra my wife. I was a bit worried that I was rushing into it, but I knew she was the one for me. On my third visit to New York, we were married at The Plaza Hotel, which is where Barbara Streisand’s famous movie The Way We Were was filmed. We were . I share our story in an effort to keep her memory alive and to inspire all the other hopeless romantics out there.”
