Ken, Stacie find romance while continents apart

Stacie and Ken Austin met online eight years ago and married this year. Photo / Ben Fraser

When Ken Austin went online, he didn't set out to find love.

But eight years since stepping into the virtual world of online chat rooms, the Rotorua man this year finally met and married Stacie, the woman he met via the computer.

Mr Austin is one of a growing number of local people meeting partners as online dating becomes more mainstream.

The pair, who started off as friends, lost contact for a few years but finally met in person earlier this year when Mr Austin headed to the US to meet his future bride. By June they were married and Mrs Austin is now living in Rotorua.

Mr Austin said he did not go into chat rooms looking for love but found he and his future wife had common interests, and it grew from there.

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"We ended up private messaging each other and started from there chatting away."

After chatting online for a while, they exchanged private email addresses and then phone numbers.

He said that because of the distance they were chatting at all hours of the day and night.

The pair met each other's families via webcam before they actually met in person and Mr Austin said it was a lot like dating - he was even interrogated by his future wife's parents.

While he had heard of people having bad experiences meeting people online, Mr Austin said it was "what you make of it".

He believed part of the reason it worked between the pair was that they took their time.

Several other people commented on the Rotorua Daily Post Facebook page to say they had tried finding love online with mixed results.

While there were a handful of others who had married the person they met through cyber-space, others said they had not found the right match.