How We Met

Not long after Emily returned from a six-month work-study trip in Bilbao, Spain, she began searching for a job in Houston. Because she was considering Houston as her new home-base, she thought she would see who she knew living in the Houston area and re-connect with some of her old friends. While browsing on a social networking website called Facebook, she came across a boy named Oren, who she remembered went on a pilgrimage trip with her to Israel in high school. She thought she would be friendly and send him a little message saying “hello” and “it’s been forever,” yada yada. However, as soon as she hit that “send” button, she had a sneaking suspicion that was not the right Oren. But she reasoned there aren’t very many Orens out there (very, very wrong about that!) and she only knew one and the picture was so small she could only see the dark features she once knew characterized her old friend.

Her hopes were that if she was wrong about that being the same Oren she knew, he would just ignore her and chalk it up to her being a weirdo. But this Oren was so sweet and really wanted to figure out how he might know her that he chose to reply to her message (He might have thought she was cute too!). So he said he went to Israel on a birthright trip but it was only a few years ago and was wondering if he knew her from somewhere else. Besides, Facebook reported that they had a lot of mutual friends. Emily wrote back saying she was a complete idiot and she thought he was another Oren (who in-fact grew up with this Oren and they remain friends to this day, so ironic). She offered to be his “Facebook friend” and he accepted.

Not long after, Emily was browsing on his profile page and noticed he was a musician on the side. He had a link posted to go hear his music on another social networking site called MySpace. She listened to a few of his songs and really liked his style. She ended up emailing him and asking where she could buy one of his CDs. He replied that unfortunately he was the only salesman so they would have to meet up for him to give her a copy. He mentioned maybe going to get some coffee sometime so the transaction could take place. Emily agreed but said she was going out of town for a while to help a friend take care of her baby while her husband recovered from a knee surgery and perhaps they could meet up when she got back.

Well, typical Emily completely forgot to get back in touch with Oren once she returned to Houston. Several weeks passed by and he decided to contact her to see if she was still interested in meeting up. Again, she felt like an idiot for not remembering and said she’d like to still get together. Although she knew they had a lot of mutual friends, she was a little weary of meeting a complete stranger off of the Internet so she gave him her phone number in order to talk and get to know each other a little better. They had a couple long phone conversations and decided to meet at his mother’s art gallery opening (she’s an artist). Oren claims it was love at first sight…but he was probably just distracted by how attracted he was to her! They began talking at the gallery and looking at his mother’s art. The funniest part of the night was that Emily immediately met his entire family as they were there to support his mom. In most American experiences, this would be considered way too soon to meet the folks…but this was a different circumstance and it helped that they were Israeli and don’t subscribe to any of that nonsense. They were happy to meet Emily and Oren’s dad even took a photo of them (a bit uncomfortable seeing as how they hadn’t yet touched up to that point!).

Oren took Emily to dinner afterwards. They went to a nice Chinese restaurant called Yao (owned by Yao Ming’s parents). There wasn’t one awkward silence all night. They chatted away about their lives and shared their likes and dislikes. After Oren took Emily back to her car, he gave her an awkward hug (gotta love those) and said he would talk to her soon. He called the next day and asked her out again. They continued dating for the next month. Oren was very creative in all of his date planning and it wasn’t long before they began to fall for each other. They became official boyfriend and girlfriend on May 1, 2008 (the same date as the marriage proposal one year later). It’s all history from there! To this day, Oren claims Emily performed the best internet search of both of their lives. She agrees.