(ping)
- [Christina] My name is Christina, and you can send
your picture to my email.
(ping)
- [Brian] I have attached a few photos.
The first picture,
I'm with one of my best friends,
and his wife Luanna.
I'm the one on the left in the dark green shirt.
- [Christina] You sound like a cool dude.
I'm from Tallahicky,
otherwise known as Tallahassee,
and did get my Bachelors in Vocal Performance
at Mercer University.
(ping) - [Brian] Okay, now it's
your turn to send me a picture
and tell me your name.
I only have your handle.
It's a blast sending these emails back and forth.
And tell me if my picture passes or fails.
So when did we meet?
We met in June of 1999
on Match.com.
- I decided to go on Match because,
I had been working as an actress,
and specifically,
I was working on a cruise ship.
So I was on furlough,
had a few months off before I was going to return
back onto the cruise ship.
And I wanted a proper date.
You don't really date on a cruise ship,
and I was like,
I want a,
I want a date.
I want like some normalcy.
I'd like to go out with a boy.
I decided that Match might be
kind of interesting.
- [Brian] So when we met on Match.com,
neither of us had a photo,
because in those days it was harder
to kind of get your photos online.
You had to take paper photos and scan them,
and then upload them,
and not all of us were like really great at doing that.
- [Christina] I didn't take a cellphone picture
until long since after we got married.
So instead,
I took some hard copy pictures of myself,
and sent them to Match.com's headquarters,
which I believe was in California.
I had to actually mail a hard copy photo
to Match.com's headquarters,
and they uploaded it for me.
- [Brian] So actually our first date happened
on the same day that we actually spoke with each other
for the first time.
I was on a business trip,
and we connected about two in the afternoon
as I was getting ready to leave and go to the airport,
to come back to New York.
It was an interesting conversation because,
the conversation didn't start out so well.
She was talking about how
Match was getting really difficult,
she wasn't meeting anyone
good that she wanted to date.
And she was about to kind of
give up on dating through Match.
And...
And then she also asked me who I was,
because she was obviously juggling
four or five different guys
that she had been chatting with or talking with
through email on Match.
Because,
you know we didn't chat back then,
you actually had to send an email each time.
And so I was thinking,
okay this is going absolutely nowhere.
And then she turned the whole conversation around.
I ended up actually missing my flight back to New York,
and having to get on a later flight.
And we ended the conversation
by saying let's meet up
in Times Square,
at 10:30 when I got back from the airport
and could get into the city.
And that ended up being our first date.
- [Christina] So we arranged to meet on a corner.
So it was 43rd and 8th.
And I saw him walking south on 8th avenue,
and I saw him before he saw me.
And he had a big smile on his face.
He looked like he was nervous,
or like,
"Oh my goodness, what am I getting myself into?"
He looked,
he looked how I was feeling.
But I was immediately struck by
what a wonderful person he seemed to be.
Even from that...
From, like a block away,
and just looking at him,
there was just something about him that really struck me.
And right off the bat I thought,
"Look at this man,
"there's something about him."
- [Brian] Yeah.
What I remember is just seeing her from across the street.
And then also,
seeing that she was with someone,
she had a friend with her at the time.
The friend was a good friend of ours named Tony.
And so - just say it honey.
- So the friend is Tony Hale - it's okay.
- [Male Voice] Hey Busty.
- [Tony Hale] Oh, hey brother!
- [Brian] And the friend who was with her...
I could tell she had brought along this friend
so that if,
maybe I was not who I was like meant to be,
or set out to be.
You know if I was some ax murderer,
or somebody she didn't feel comfortable with,
that her friend was there to kind of protect her,
from the situation.
But I remember her actually going to her friend Tony,
and sort of talking to him,
and almost literally pushing him away.
Like saying,
"It's okay.
"I see this guy.
"He looks like a great guy."
and that gave me also a comfort level,
thinking,
okay hey, there's at least an attraction that we have
with one another.
Ended up going on the date.
We grabbed some dinner at Galaxy Diner.
And then we went for a drink at a place
called Zanzibar afterwards,
in the Hell's Kitchen area of New York.
And we had a really good first date.
- We were serious right off the bat.
By the time I met Brian I was like,
you know what, I really do know what I want.
I know what kind of man I need to be with.
Let's just cut to the chase.
How do you feel about these subjects?
And I started,
just kind of like rapid fire.
Asking him,
how do you feel about marriage?
How do you feel about kids?
How do you feel about religion?
And I remember him answering every single one
exactly how I'd want him to answer.
He wasn't trying to impress me.
He wasn't trying to read social cues
to see if I was happy,
if I was,
if I was agreeing with his responses.
So I knew that he wasn't,
he wasn't trying to tailor anything to me.
It was really truly what he thought about the subject.
And so I thought,
after those 10 questions,
and he answered them beautifully,
and it was truly what his thoughts were.
I thought,
okay I'm all done here.
Let's get married.
And I said it.
I asked him.
I said sounds great.
Awesome.
Let's get married.
- [Brian] I just didn't know what to think.
And I just sort of laughingly joked and said,
well why don't we get to know one another first,
a little bit better,
and then we can kind of decide.
So, that was my response.
Yeah so after our first date,
we spent a really intense amount of time together
over the following month.
And a lot of it was related to my job,
where,
I had a change in job.
I was still going to be working with IBM.
But the client that I was working with,
had merged with another company,
and everybody was going to be moving to a different state.
And also I knew that,
one of the options for me,
might be getting reassigned or relocated
to another place within my work.
And it looked like that was going to happen.
And it looked like I would have to leave New York
and go to North Carolina for my next job at IBM.
And so we'd talked about that a good bit.
And we also talked about not wanting to be
in a long distance relationship.
And now it was on me to say,
"Alright, what do I think?"
And I just kind of paused on the phone for probably,
I don't know,
it might've been 30 seconds.
And just said...
I said to her after that time...
I said,
"Okay, let's get married."
(mood music)
(chilled music)