The Voice - Student Newspaper

Your soulmate may be 'caught' on the web

Technology has improved astonishingly over the last few years. Americans are no exception when taking advantage of it. One of the trends followed by teenagers and adults is online dating.

According to Online Dating Magazine, there are over 120,000 couples that meet online and get married every year.

This is no surprise for most of the people since 31 percent of adults in the US say they know at least one person that utilizes the internet for online dating, as the Pew Internet & American Life Project Report found out in its research.

Kathy McKeever, the Sunset Bowl owner in Phoenix, is no stranger for the online dating environment; she actually met her husband five years ago using the Yahoo! personals website.

McKeever says she found a good way to meet quality people that were seriously looking for a relationship. In this case, the internet played a key role when searching for the right person.

McKeever said, "I am not a participant in organized religion and I don't care to meet people in bars." The internet was her allied tool.

McKeever had to go through at least 50 first dates to find the right person, "Oh, I had to go through a lot of people. But I think part of that has to do with the fact of my age group, I am middle aged. I think that in a lot of cases people that are in their 40's, 50's and 60's, if they're single, often times there is a pretty good reason why," she explained.

"I suspect that for younger people it might be a little easier," McKeever said, and she is right.

Adrian Vega, a music director, and Lizeth Lizarraga, a hair stylist in the Valley, are now happily married.

Vega and Lizarraga met on "The Loop", a currently discontinued phone chat line, 8 years ago.

"I was 14," Lizarraga said. "I took advantage of her, I was 16," Vega replied giggling.

The Vega Family is growing; Vega and Lizarraga have a 4 year old named Julian and are expecting Isaiah in a month.

They own a beautiful home in the valley and are successful at what they do. Adrian is now 24 years old and Lizarraga is 22 years old, "We have grown up together," she said.

When they both were asked if they would recommend other people to start looking online or over the phone they said, "In my experience I would say yes because you never know when you're going to find that someone. There is good and bad in both. I think it would be good because you get to know a person's personality first and you get to know them better before you meet them."

Is everybody honest while dating online? "I don't know, I am sure not everybody is," Lizarraga said.

That is true, not everybody is honest when they are chatting online. That's why there are some safety procedures McKeever follows when meeting in person for the first time.

"I always drove myself, I always let other people know where I was going to be and I was very careful about letting people know where I lived until I really had a sense of who they were and whether they were trustworthy or not," says McKeever.

These two stories are living proof that success can be achieved through online dating.

If meeting people in person for the first time does not work for you try going online or utilizing the phone dating service, why not just go for it?