This Couple Really Clicked In An Instant Pushing All The Right Buttons In Computer ‘Bar’ Led To Marriage

Kent Weston never imagined he’d meet the woman of his dreams in a bar. Especially not a cyberbar.

Weston met his bride-to-be, Jill Ivie, in Lapub, a “bar” on America Online, where people from around the country flirt through computer screens while downing pretend “cyberdrinks.”

“I was there just to play,” said Weston, who recently moved to Idaho Falls from Dallas to marry Ivie, a lifelong resident, this month. “It’s a great way to get rid of the frustrations of the day.”

Weston describes Lapub as “kind of a cross between Cheers and an old English tavern.” Messages about the bar’s atmosphere and what’s going on flash on the screen as the discussion from as many as 23 people at once scrolls down it. Weston, whose screen name is “Mr. Innocent” and Ivie, “MyLadyJill,” both had friends at Lapub, and knew the bartender.

When they met that October night, he had ordered a cyber Coke, and she was drinking white Zinfandel. They talked about stocks, golf, classes they had taken, and learned that each had two children. He viewed a photo of her she had stored in Lapub’s “cellar,” a sort of gallery.

“Everything we talked about felt good,” said Weston, 39, an executive with a company that does investigative reports for television newsmagazines. Ivie, 38, is a secretary with the University of Idaho.

Before long, they moved the conversation to a private “room,” then after a couple of hours, talked on the telephone. At $2.90 an hour, the computer time was cheaper than phone time.

They talked by computer and phone most nights, but didn’t meet in person until he flew to Idaho Falls for Christmas, two months later.

Both were nervous beforehand. But once they met in person, the anxiety wore off quickly.

“It was comfortable,” he said. “It was like we’d been a couple for 20 years.”

He proposed the “old-fashioned way” on the phone.

People are skeptical when they tell them how they met, but Weston says computer introductions have advantages over meeting in person.

“Meeting someone on computer and talking to them, you get to know their thought processes before knowing their physical attributes,” he said.

As the Internet and online services with chat rooms like Lapub have become more popular, marriages-made-in-cyberspace have become more common. “In the little corner of cyberspace where Kent and I met, I know five or six different couples who met there,” Ivie said.

Ivie, with two small kids, was unable to get out much, but with Lapub, she could “go out,” and didn’t even have to get dressed up. Ivie pointed out, too, that the dating scene in Idaho Falls is hardly robust.