Most of the time, if you ask Max how we met, he’ll reply with the truth.

We met at my favorite place in San Francisco; the park bench in Precita Park across from the coin-op laundromat where I used to wash my clothes.

What’s also true, is that Elaine and Max were in conversation long before they met in person, giving them opportunity to craft their own “how we met (in person)” story. The question then is, how did the conversation start, if not by miraculous chance in the middle of a San Francisco dog park?

The answer is that Max moved to the middle of nowhere Minnesota after college to work at a small Christian non-profit. While the work was fantastic, he didn’t find rural Minnesota the easiest place for meeting the type of well-traveled brilliant Christian woman he was one day hoping to marry. So he made an online dating profile to cast the net wider and then forgot about it.

For many years, Elaine’s mother had encouraged her to make an online dating profile. Elaine finally acquiesced, and even set her location to San Francisco, knowing it was where her mother prefer she end up. She set the notifications to a junk email and forgot about it.

One night after Max moved to San Francisco, he had an idle night and remembered the profile. He was curious whether there were actually women of faith who lived in the city and decided to do reconnaissance.

One night after hiking with her parents in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, Elaine remembered the profile and decided to check the junk email address. There she found a friendly and witty message composed of grammatically correct and appropriately punctuated sentences.

And that’s how the conversation between Max (drinker_of_tea) and Elaine (55darlingst) began.