To David Hughes, social media had about as much appeal as having a tooth pulled.
“When I got home,” he said, “sitting in front of a computer wasn't my sense of enjoyment.”
It was just something he did to please his mother, who he said wanted to be able to communicate with him there.
Dohna Frost was also on Facebook, but she was there for a different reason.
“It made me feel better going on Facebook, and seeing good things.
Back then, happiness was hard to come by. She’d been in an abusive marriage for many years. So Facebook was where she went to escape from a life that had fallen far short of her dreams.
“I’d watch videos of just cute things to make me laugh!” Dohna said.
She saw other people’s fairy-tale endings, but that’s about as close as she thought she’d get to having one of her own, saying, “I figured 'this is my life.'”
But on Sept. 9, 2009, a face on Facebook stirred something in that broken heart of hers. It was a face she had not seen in 36 years.
David Hughes, from her tiny hometown in rural Massachusetts.
“You know that butterfly feeling that schoolgirls get when they see a cute guy in the hallway? I have goosebumps right now, just from thinking about it! He was the dreamy guy with the big brown eyes in high school!”
She'd always had a crush on him, but kept it to herself.
“I admired him from afar,” says Dohna.
But this time around, she decided to put shyness aside. Dohna typed 5 words that would change their lives forever:
“I typed ‘how do I know you?’ That's all I put,” she says.
David just happened to be on Facebook at the right time.
“Without hesitation,” he says, “I knew exactly who it was, and I told her ‘we went to high school together!’”
“And from that moment on,” chimes in Dohna, “we have not been apart.”
There was a lot of catching up to do. Both had been married, had children. They’d both left Massachusetts.
And both had moved to Florida. They were living just an hour and a half apart.
David could not believe the coincidence.
"She said she was in Port Orange and I'm in Jacksonville, but yet we're both from a little town up in Massachusetts!”
The couple finishes each other’s sentences.
"14 hours away!" adds Dohna.
“It's just ironic,” says David, “like this is kinda odd!”
A month later they met at a pier. It was love at second sight.
Describing it, the couple banters back and forth. Dohna sets the scene: “I was running down the pier, I see him and I jumped up!”
David adds: “She literally jumped in the air.”
Dohna: “Arms around his neck."
David: “Threw her legs around my waist, her arms around my neck! The last thing I expected her to come jumping up on me!”
It was a scene straight out of Hollywood,
“That slow-motion commercial” Dohna waxes nostalgic.
David chimes in, “It was! It was! It was like almost slow motion. You don't get that. The average person? I don't know a whole lot of people that ever get that.”
Dohna now had her own Facebook fairy tale. She didn’t need to watch other people’s.
She describes David as “a miracle,” saying “he was my saving grace, actually.”
And it was all thanks to Dohna's five-word question: ‘How do I know you?’
Before long, David* had a five-word question of his ownr.
“He said, 'Dohna, will you marry me? And I said yes, Hell yes!”
On Nov. 5, 2011, they tied the knot. They describe themselves as a perfect match.
“Perfect, yes” says the groom, adding ,“We’re soulmates!”
Call it fate, call it faith. But you can't ignore the power of Facebook.
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