image via soulgeek.com

The story of how the Road Trips managed to get together is either very simple or very not. The simple version is we met in a chatroom, exchanged some witty banter when I noticed he lived in the city where I was born and we shared the same profession, hit it off and he came to visit one weekend in November. The rest is history.

The not simple version, well, that’s not just our story.

Many years ago, Dino and Mary Kay were a happily married couple living and working in California as voice actors. Unfortunately, Mary Kay had some private struggles going on and gave in to that battle, leaving Dino broken-hearted.

When he finally got the courage to get back into the dating scene, he found the online dating world to be stacked against our kind. What kind is that? Geeks. The comic book readers, RPG players, Star Trek or Wars-watching, cosplaying “freaks” among us were pretty unanimously shunned on a lot of the mainstream dating sites.

Luckily for Dino, he reconnected with his high school sweetheart one day and they were able to pick up pretty much where they left off.

One Father’s Day, this high school love surprised Dino with tickets to a Battlestar Gallactica concert at the Hollywood Bowl. While being cuddly in line they saw a cute girl standing alone. Dino, being quite the people-person, said ‘I hope we’re not being too mushy.’ She replied ‘No, no, I’m hoping I can find a geek of my own, here.’

Dino was floored. Here was this cute girl that, were he 10 years younger, he’d certainly try to chat up, into geekie things but couldn’t find a guy? “There should be a place where geeks can find other geeks to date,” Dino said. And his lady love, smart one that she is, replied “Why don’t you make one.”

And that’s how Soulgeek.com started. And had ads on popular webcomics, stressing it as a geek dating and community site. And that’s how both Mr. Road Trip and I, each not necessarily looking for anything more than a fun place to hang out, decided to check out this site just to see what it was all about.

It sounds like such a round-about way of getting us together, but we’re more than aware of the steps that it took for both of us to be in the same place, at the same time, and at the right time to be open to a relationship–even though we didn’t think we were to begin with.

We’ve since become good friends with the founder of the site (as one of their earlier success stories) and it makes us all the more conscious of the hows, whys, and who perhaps had to sacrifice to bring us together. For this we send out a sincere note of thanks, even if it is has to reach beyond the bounds of the U.S. Postal System.

Is there anyone you owe a thank-you to for your relationship?