And then the wheel stopped on my number

“Love is worse than a crap shoot. It’s more like a spin on the world’s largest roulette wheel. When you love someone (and I mean that term broadly, to include attractions, crushes, any of those moments our insides open toward someone else in a way which is beyond logic and our control), it doesn’t mean anything except that you love them. It doesn’t make them good for you, or interested in you, or anything else that ends in the word “you.” If it turns out that they love you back, in a way that makes both of your lives better, that’s one of the luckiest coincidences that can happen in the world.”—postcardsfromguyville.blogspot.com

Quoted for truth. But once in a while the spin pays off.
About five years ago, I was at the Denver Mensa Annual Gathering when I saw this very cute brunette sitting and reading outside the hospitality suite. Recognizing the book (Collapse by Jared Diamond) I decided the fact I’d read another of Diamond’s books gave me something to talk about so I approached her and we struck up a conversation (we’d met the night I arrived but it was very brief).
We ran into each other a couple more times but when my schedule changed I had to leave very early Sunday morning. And while the dawn breaking over Denver is rather lovely, it didn’t make up for the annoying fact that leaving early precluded me getting her email.
Fortunately, she was more efficient and found me on LinkedIn. Which I assumed might be flirting (it wasn’t) so I emailed her back. And we did a lot of back and forth email before I tried very tentatively flirting, and she asked me if I was, in fact flirting. I said yes, she suggested we move up to phone calls (and in violation of all rules, discussed marriage on about the second or third).
About two months later, we met at the Atlanta Mensa gathering. And before we went home, we upgraded our FB statuses to “in a relationship.” Then followed lots of long-distance visits and into 2009 as we prepared for me to move up in 2010.
During this, when I first talked about her online, I identified her by her initial. She said she’d prefer me to use TYG for The Young Goddess and so it has been since.
We’d sort of assumed that I’d propose after we’d moved up and saw how it worked. Only I started thinking that it would be more romantic to ask ahead of time, so that she wouldn’t feel pressure to say yes (i.e., it would be a lot harder for me to go back to my old life once I’d moved from Florida to Durham). So I popped the question to her in November, on the beach. She was so silent with shock that I thought she was going to say no. But she said yes (phew!).
And June 11, 2011, we became married. Today we celebrated the second anniversary. And it’s fabulous.