Alice and Jon met while playing the virtual farming game called “Hay Day”, a game played on phones where players would trade produce and talk amongst each other on a group chat. Only 30 players can be in a neighbourhood at one time, and out of the millions of people that play worldwide, Jon and Alice ended up in the same one.
When Alice went quiet on the group chat and stopped playing the game, Jon messaged Alice on facebook to find out why. Alice told him that her marriage had ended, and Jon explained he was going through something similar.
Jon was a project manager at an oil and gas company in Texas when their friendship “sprouted”. Alice was a mother of four and an accounting student in NZ.
Jon had never flown within three hours out of Texas, however this was about to change.
Alice said how nice it was to have someone talk to her that wasn’t trying to hit on her and said she felt safe because he was so far away and didn’t have an agenda. She didn’t bother putting her best foot forward because she didn’t care as she wasn’t trying to impress him.
Eventually they began messaging each other every day and they would then talk using the Facebook call feature. As this was free they could talk every day and would spend up to eight hours chatting at times.
I have no doubt that Cupid was certainly hovering close by at this time.
Alice recalls that she didn’t really think he was her kind of guy initially. Photos showing Jon holding a fish … and then more fish didn’t do much for her.
However she was soon to discover that Jon had an interest in photography, showing a creative side, and it was around this time that her view of him changed.
They talked every day for 3 months, and then Jon decided to make his move and flew out to New Zealand for a holiday in early February 2015. 2 weeks later, on February 17th2015 they decided they just had to be together, and Jon began preparing to move to NZ.
He sold his belongings, gave his ex wife their dogs to keep and bought a ticket back to Aotearoa….The Land of the Long White Cloud.
Jon’s parents thought he was crazy. Jon says – “When you don’t think you’re ever going to meet each other, you’re really genuine”. He says “that was probably the biggest thing. It was nothing that he ever thought he would try and had never thought about the whole internet dating thing, it just developed”.
They have been together for three years now and became engaged in October 2016.
