Matt and Rebecca Hudson got married via the game. (
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The best score you can get on Words With Friends is not, as it turns out, a bingo on a triple word: it’s a diamond ring and a wedding.
The ubiquitous smartphone-based word game has only been around for three years, but tales of people meeting their soul mate through the random opponent feature is becoming less uncommon than getting a Q and a U in the same hand.
Couples around the country who were complete strangers before they hit the random button ended up falling in love and getting married; others have even proposed through the game.
So in a world with intensely detailed dating profiles and matchmaker services, it might be the simple interaction of a word game and its no-frills chat feature that is spelling true love.
“It still blows my mind that it happened this way,” says Trish Palmer, 42, who met her now-husband through the game. “It’s almost disgusting how happy I am.”
Back in 2010, Palmer downloaded the game on a recommendation from a friend. The game was still catching on, so she hit random, seeking an opponent.
The conversation with the stranger over chat started with basic information, but soon they swapped photos and e-mail addresses. Before long they were chatting every day and making plans to meet. Their chemistry was instant.
By spring of 2011, she proposed to him in a restaurant. They were married on the beach of South Carolina in November of that year.
These luck-of-the-draw marriages aren’t just an American phenomenon. Megan Lawless struck up a random game out of boredom in 2009 and ended up chatting with a firefighter in the Netherlands. In-game chatting led to e-mail, e-mail led to Skype and Skype led to him wanting to come visit. Lawless was hesitant at first.
“I wouldn’t even date someone who didn’t live in my neighborhood,” she says. “To date someone who lived in a foreign country seemed so far-fetched.”
Still, he was persistent and they hit it off. She flew to Amsterdam that spring, and during a weekend trip to Paris he proposed.
Eventually, he moved to Chicago, and they got married in July 2011.
The game even helped them stay in touch, while an ocean apart.
“Especially with the time difference, it was the easiest way for us to talk to each other throughout the day without it interfering with my work day or keeping him up at night,” she says.
Matt Hudson didn’t meet his girlfriend of three years through the game, but he did use it to spell out their future together.
They had been dating for over two years, but Hudson had moved back home to Arkansas, while his girlfriend, Rebecca, was still living outside Washington D.C.
“We played remote a lot,” he says. “It ended up really helping us because it was long distance for four or five months.”
When she finally moved, they had already chatted marriage, so Hudson had an idea: He started a game and kept swapping out the letters until he was able to spell “Marry Me.” He made a screenshot, challenged her to play, and then pulled out the “marry me” screen when it was her turn.
For all these players, just because two people fall in love over the game, doesn’t mean their love for it has decreased.
“Even if we’re sitting across from each other at a restaurant, we’ll be playing,” says Dee Pinheiro of Elk Grove, Calif., who was reconnected with an old friend she hadn’t seen in six years when her name showed up on his screen. They’ve been dating seriously now since July.
“People think we’re not talking to each other because we’re on our phones.”