Inter Racial Marriages

Darlene & Bill -
Annapolis, Maryland, United States

Married November 2014

She Found Love in a Military Man

Darlene and Bill were very much in love, but Bill was on active duty for the U.S. Navy and could only see his sweetheart between deployments. It was on one such occasion that they had a conversation they will never forget. “He was at the Naval Station in Norfolk preparing to deploy to Djibouti (Africa) in January 2013,” Darlene recollects. “He invited me to visit him in Norfolk, and proposed!”

Their nuptials went off without a hitch. “We were married in Florence, Italy during Bill’s deployment,” Darlene tells us. “We had two ceremonies: A civil ceremony at the Sala Rossa and a church ceremony at St. James Church, the same church where David Bowie and Iman were married in 1992. We didn’t know that fact until after we booked the church. We honeymooned in Rome. We were in Italy for over two weeks! We have a ton of wedding photos and a video. The first photo we uploaded [to this website] was taken in Florence with the Duomo in the background.”

By now you’ve probably guessed how these two met — right here, on this dating site — but you might be curious as to how. Their story is a bit different from most...

First, we asked Darlene what drew her to date online. “I led a very busy life with my work and community activities, yet I wasn’t meeting the type of men I wanted to meet,” she replies. “I’ve never been into the bar scene, though that’s fine for those who choose to meet that way. Online dating provided another source for meeting someone new. This site was not my first experience with online dating.”

Bill is a man of few words, relatively speaking, but he says that he had a similar reason for joining our site. “I felt there was more potential with online dating,” he notes. “This was not my first experience with it.”

Darlene says she was “very confident” that this gamble could pay off. “I kept an open mind about the men that I met online, though I didn’t rush things.” Bill was “fairly confident” about the possibilities.

Their patience would be tested, though. It took Bill two years and Darlene three and a half to see this investment in their love lives pay off. But their time with the site proved more than worthwhile when Darlene found Bill’s profile.

“I reached out to him,” she informs us. “Here’s the story. My father died in the line of duty with the Army in Vietnam. My mother, who passed in 1998, never remarried. Many of the men she dated after my father died were in the military because she said that most men who were career military tended to be very disciplined, courteous and intelligent. My mother and I were very close, and I often feel her presence with me, guiding me. I could hear her say, ‘Search military’ when I was conducting my profile search. So, I searched for ‘military’ — something I had never done before. Bill’s profile was one of several that appeared when I entered my search criteria.”

There was something about Bill that stood out, in Darlene’s eyes. She just had to contact him! As she remembers it, “I liked his profile, so I sent a friendly email saying hello and complimenting him on his profile. The rest, as they say, is history!”

So what was it about this profile, other than Bill’s profession, that told her their combination would be compelling? “His description of himself,” Darlene answers. “I sensed he was a warm and intelligent man with a sense of humor.”

When Bill got the message from Darlene, he naturally logged into our site to peruse her profile. Right away he liked her screen name — “BeautyBrainy” — and her photo was appealing. However, it was how she described herself that really caught his attention.

That got them going and ultimately, “after many emails and telephone calls,” they decided to go on a date. “I had dated long-distance before, so the distance was not really a factor,” says Darlene. “However, I really didn’t consider the distance between New Jersey (my home) and Maryland (his) to be that far.” Bill nods in agreement. “She was as close to me as someone in Virginia.”

Here’s how it all went down. “He invited me to visit him in Maryland,” Darlene recalls. “I arrived by train in Baltimore. He cooked dinner for me the first evening. We went sightseeing in the area and spent a lot of time simply talking in person, to get to know each other.”

Here was her first thought upon seeing Bill in the flesh: “Wow... he really is as he described himself in his profile, and as I thought he would be.” That moment always comes as a relief, doesn’t it? Bill says he remembers thinking, “Yowza! She looked better in person than her photographs.”

We asked what, if anything, surprised them about their first-date experience. Bill steps up to field this one. “Nothing was really surprising,” he says, after pondering the question for a moment. “Surprising maybe that she really was as she described herself in her profile, and on the phone. Not everyone online is completely truthful about themselves.”

Darlene appreciates that Bill “was a perfect gentleman who didn’t try to ‘paw’ me.” She was confident they would go out again, and he “felt there was potential.” She seemed “very similar” to what he considered his “type,” and Darlene felt the same way.

There was only one obstacle that could potentially nip this romance in the bud: Bill’s next deployment. “She could have ended our dating relationship when I told her I was going to be deployed, but she didn’t,” says Bill with a smile.

Darlene wouldn’t throw away a love like this because of a period of separation. The impact that meeting Bill has had on her life is “all for the better. I found my soulmate, after being very independent all of my adult life.”

Bill tells guys out there to stick with it, even though not everyone you meet online will be right for you. “You’ve got to kiss a lot of toadettes before you find your princess,” laughs Bill.

Darlene has this to say to everyone who is still on a quest for love. “Keep an open mind and heart,” she advises. “Be guided by both your head and your heart. Don’t jump in too quickly saying, ‘Oh, this is the person I will marry!’ Give yourself time to get to know the person’s mind, heart, and soul.”

Click here to read more inspiring interracial marriage stories.