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CNN Sunday Morning

Interview With Jeff Truax, Darlene Truax

Aired July 28, 2002 - 11:40   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
RENAY SAN MIGUEL, CNN ANCHOR: You've probably heard countless stories about the seamy side of romance on the Internet. But what is not reported as often is that millions of U.S. singles are turning to cyberspace as a legitimate way to find companionship and sometimes love.

Online dating services are a booming industry, and at a time when many dot-coms are going bust, these businesses are now surviving; they are thriving. We're going to take a closer look at this phenomenon today. Joining us now from Toronto are Jeff and Darlene Truax, a couple who met online. And also with us is CNN.com technology correspondent Daniel Sieberg. His brother just got married to a woman he met on the Internet.

Daniel, this is your younger brother. You're supposed to be watching out for him and everything. Didn't you tell him that there was supposedly a stigma about meeting people online?

DANIEL SIEBERG, CNN TECHNOLOGY CORRESPONDENT: He's a pretty net- savvy guy, so I think he knew what he was getting into from the beginning, and they corresponded for about a year and a half. They didn't meet on on of these traditional online service; they actually met through ICQ, which is a type of a chat program like AOL, parent company of CNN, where you can chat back and forth. They met at one of these communities, started to get interested in each other, and over the course of about a year and a half, really built up this online relationship. Saw each other in person a few times. Like what they saw, and subsequently got married just last weekend.

SAN MIGUEL: And you know, was there anything different in how they did this? I mean, this has been going on -- this is probably one of the more, you know, this has much more history when it comes to Internet services than a lot of other things that are on the Web right now.

SIEBERG: Absolutely. I would say that Internet dating in some fashion or another has been around really since the Internet has been around. What's increasingly people are noticing, is there's less stigma attached to it. There is less of a negativity attached to it as we've seen before.

SAN MIGUEL: Let me interrupt for just a second. We've got to go back to the big story of the day, the rescue of the miners in Pennsylvania. (INTERRUPTED FOR COVERAGE OF LIVE EVENT)

SAN MIGUEL: We want to continue our discussion now with the -- concerning the online dating phenomenon. We were talking with Jeff and Darlene Truax, a couple up in Toronto who actually met online. Let me start off here and ask, who was the first one to kind of cast a net into the Internet here and try to find love? Which one of you was the first one to make this effort?

JEFF TRUAX, MET WIFE ONLINE: That was me. I was having a string of bad luck on dating offline, and I was thinking, well, you know, here I am at work and working for LoveLife, why not try it and that's why I posted an ad and started my search.

SAN MIGUEL: And you saw Darlene's profile and you made the -- you know, you made the initial call there or the initial, I guess, effort to get ahold of her on the Internet.

Darlene, what did you think when that came across on your Web?

DARLENE TRUAX, MET HUSBAND ONLINE: Well, I saw his message and I liked his picture and his ad, and at the time I was just looking for a casual dating -- meet people and have new experiences, and Jeff was into the same thing. So I replied and we started to chat.

SAN MIGUEL: And the next thing you know, you're getting married. I'm wondering, did either one of you have any kind of thoughts about the kind of people that do this, that, you know, set up their relationships on the Internet? Was there any kind of a stigma involved here, or did you feel more comfortable?

J. TRUAX: I felt more comfortable myself, because I find when I'm online I'm able to get to know a person a little better. I've been in bars, and you just think, you know, if that person got to know me, they'd really like me. And online I can search hundreds of different profiles.

D. TRUAX: For myself, there was no stigma. How I started was my roommate was online, and he was having a great time meeting people. And so I thought I'd try it out, with no expectations, just to have some fun, and look where it led me.

SAN MIGUEL: And the idea here is you would recommend this to your friends? There is no feeling at all -- and there's enough information, I know a lot of these Web sites that you upload pictures, but it may not be the picture of the person you're actually talking to, and also the idea here that that person could be, you know, several time zones away. Did any of these thoughts enter into your mind?

J. TRUAX: No, in fact, it's not a matter of if we would recommend it; we have recommended LoveLife to a lot of my friends anyway, and quite a few of them have actually met people on the service. Not necessarily married yet, but they have. As for time zones away, I have seen many people say, hey, the love of my life was on the other coast, but they made the jump and they've done it, and they've never been happier.

SAN MIGUEL: All right. Well, we wish you both a lot of success, and good luck to you. And we also want to thank you for being patient as we've had to deal with some breaking news here. Jeff and Darlene Truax in Toronto, thank you so much for your time today.

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