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Bedford Couple Found Love Through Online Backgammon

By Barbara Brosher

Posted February 11, 2016

According to the Pew Research Center, five percent of Americans who are married or in a committed relationship say they met their significant other online.

That includes a Bedford couple who's now been married for a decade. But it wasn't a dating website that brought them together; it was a chance meeting over a game of strategy.

"We met playing backgammon on Yahoo," says Julie Ortals, who lived in Canada at the time.

Her now-husband John Ortals invited her to play a game not knowing whether she was a man or woman. They started chatting and set up a time to play again.

That was back in 1999 – long before millions of people turned to the Internet to find love.

We met at a time when we both had something in common.

Julie and John weren't even looking for it.

"We met at time when we both had something in common," John says. "We were both going through a divorce."

They kept playing games and started chatting over the phone before deciding to meet in person. John made the drive from Bedford up to Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario for a long weekend.

"I was getting to the room and John came out of the elevator and I knew it was him," Julie says. "And I looked at him, my heart started to beat and I think I fell in love right away."

They covered a lot of miles after that – taking turns driving 16 hours one way to visit each other.

Then on the one-year anniversary of their first in-person encounter, they met again in Sault Ste. Marie. Talking about that day still makes John emotional.

"Our hotel room overlooked the St. Mary's River and that's where they had the fireworks for Canada Day," John says while choking back tears.

I think I fell in love right away.

"He gets so emotional," Julie says. "He proposed and I said yes."

They were engaged for about six years before finally getting married. It's been a decade since then and John and Julie are just as happy in person as they are in all of their old pictures.

They may not play backgammon much anymore, but they've learned how to win – at love.

"Lots of humor," Julie says. "I think we need to laugh. John makes me laugh like crazy."

"And mutual respect," John says.

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Bedford Couple Found Love Through Online Backgammon

By Barbara Brosher

Posted February 11, 2016

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