Pen Pal Love Story

I don't feel like such a freak after hearing this Pen Pal Love Story on The Story (an excellent radio series). Melinda and I traded zines and pen pal letters for about 8 or 9 months before I moved from Michigan to Texas to meet her. With all the hellish stories you hear these days about internet relationships gone wrong, I expect half the people to think ours was a story of stalking. But almost everyone sees it as romantic. This story is another example of how pen pals getting married can be romantic instead of pitiful and desperate.

I didn't propose to Melinda three days after meeting her in person, so I'm a little more level-headed than this guy. We got married nine months later (and don't forget the nine months or so of writing letters and phone calls before that). Then again, Vic and Marianne wrote each other for twelve years before meeting in person, so maybe they had a solid enough foundation to reasonably suggest marriage three days after meeting.

Melinda and I had our tenth anniversary on Halloween 2007. The couple in this story has been married 52 years.