He called me for the first time and next thing we knew, we were making plans for "The Meeting." I told him what I looked like and where I would be. The Day came before I knew it. I was keeping an eye out for him, but I didn't see him. In fact, he didn't see me at first either. But then his brother saw me. He handed Jeremy his hat to give to me to hold while they rode the ride. That's when Jeremy saw me for the first time.

BAM. Jeremy fell in love, or so he says. I melted--he handed me his brother's hat and a single red rose. Romantic, yes. I'll never forget--he was wearing those tight black jeans that I hated, and his hair was longer. But he had the most amazing blue eyes. He rode the ride and came back. Though he said he was shy, he certainly wasn't too shy to ask me for a hug. And so I gave him one. One hug led to another.... And so sprung an Internet Love...

Jeremy's Version

How we met on the Internet: I was dating a girl in Orlando, FL who had recently moved to Miami to attend college. I signed up for Internet access to talk to her via the Internet Relay Chat program in which we would talk to each other in "chat rooms." The only problem was that I can never "find" her to talk to her in these chat rooms. Eventually, things got rocky and we separated.

A few months went by, and I had filled my Internet time with other online activities like surfing the web and trading games/programs with friends. One day, I decided to re-visit the IRC channels and get back into chatting. I was surfing through the channels when I came across an interesting nickname in a channel called "Romance." There was someone there named "Cheryluv." I had taken it that Cheryl was her real name. I started talking to Cheryluv and found out that we had a lot in common, i.e. our fathers were both stationed in Germany and we were both therefore born in Germany at relatively the same time. We both ended up finding each other in Florida.

I found out that she worked at an amusement park in Tampa in which I had a pass to. We started talking every night on the Internet in the Romance channel. After a couple weeks went by, I asked her if I could go down to the amusement park where she worked to finally meet her. At first, she was skeptical, but she agreed after a bit of persuasion from me.

I drove to Tampa with my brother and his girlfriend. I took along with me a long stem rose to give to Cheryl. We walked to the ride that she worked at, and at first, I did not see her while I was waiting in line. I made it all the way to the coaster and still had not seen her. When it was my turn to get on the ride, I climbed into the coaster with my brother and his girlfriend. I then looked at the rose and said, "Great, this is probably gonna get ruined." My brother handed me his cowboy hat and told me to give it to one of the people checking harnesses. I turned around to find a cute little brunette walking towards me. When she got closer, I noticed her name tag said ‘CHERYL’. I handed her my brother’s cowboy hat and then told her to hang on to the rose. Her eyes opened to the size of softballs when she saw me holding out the red rose. She took the rose and said, "Jeremy?!?" I smiled and nodded saying, "I’ll be right back." I rode the ride and when I got back, she had a smile on her face that would dwarf the Grand Canyon!

Before we had ever met, I asked her if I could get a hug from her, and she had reluctantly said she doesn’t hug just anyone. But when I asked for a hug when we actually met, she walked over and just about squeezed the air out of me! We talked a while, and then I kept popping back up to ride her ride throughout the day.

For several weeks after that, we either talked on the phone or on IRC everyday; eventually I asked her to go to Disney World with me for our first date. I drove to Tampa from Orlando to pick her up and take her back to Orlando with me; of course, we had a blast and that marked the first day we held hands. At the end of April, I invited her to my senior prom and once again, I drove an hour and a half to pick her up. The evening could not have been better! The night I took her back, we had our first kiss. 

I met her in January on the Internet and by May 20, 1996, I knew that I had fallen in love with her. On May 20th, we started dating, and we have been together for two years now. I don’t think I could have had a better time if I wanted to.

"Cheryl & Jeremy"