Abby and Allen

I was on Frumster for so many years that my numeric ID was a mere four characters long; by contrast, his was six. After years of being shlepped along by a fellow low-numbered Frumsterman I tried to move on through a series of Frumster messages, emails, phone calls, and even a few nice meetings—they just were not Mr. Right. So eventually I did what every normal, red-blooded, broken-hearted, Jewish-American woman would do after searching for “so long.” I quit. I gave up. I was determined to forget about being alone and single and concentrated on my relatively new job, my new condo, and my health. Then one day I logged into Frumster…I could just jump to the end of the story, but since you’re reading this, you already know! The fun part is what happened from the first email to the days we got married. No, that’s not a misprint…I meant to say days.

This widower lived 11 thousand miles away on the opposite end of the world in Australia . I’d had enough of foreigners who’d shlepped me along, but there was so much that was different about this man. He had been married 30 years to a woman he loved deeply and took care of until the day she passed. He had adult children. He was ready to compartmentalize his grief and find another partner with whom he could celebrate life. He paid for three months, looked at 300 profiles, and thought mine was the most refreshingly honest of them all. He only needed his membership for three days total before we progressed from Frumster messages to emails, to phone calls, to web cam—just to make sure we were each as we represented ourselves. He was warm and friendly in every progression. Then we got to “The Big One.” It was time to meet in person to see if the chemistry was real. He made the nearly 30 hour door-to-door trip to meet me, and, B”H, we were exactly what we expected from each other. Within a few weeks I was on my way Down Under for an unheard of (for an American) five-week holiday! And what Holidays they were! From before Rosh Hashanah through Sukkot, plus Shabbatot visiting a variety of shuls, eating at welcoming friends’ homes, and lucky for me, a few days of touring between all the Holy Days celebrations.

A few thousand photographs, fingers nibbled by a kangaroo, and a lot of purchases later, on the way to the airport he proposed and I accepted. I returned home and in less than two months made the journey back to Australia for our chupah and a mini-honeymoon. Days later I was back to work as usual. (It’s a minor miracle that my manager let me go away again, but it was certainly for a good cause!)

It’s been a few months since the chupah and we just tied the knot in a civil marriage. Now we’re working on his citizenship application, getting him a green card, and starting up his businesses locally.

Moral of the story? From the groom’s side: It was the best $45 for three days membership I ever spent in my life! From the bride’s side: Maybe it’s a good idea to stop looking and see what falls from heaven, or from the other side of the equator.