Do Wrong Numbers Ring Wedding Bells?

Oct 07, 2009 10 Comments »

I heard a story the other day about a couple who met in just about the oddest way. The woman was minding her own business one night at home, doing some work, watching Grey’s, or whatever her night might have involved, and then her phone rang. She answered and the guy on the other end started going on about stuff she didn’t understand. She quickly interjected and the guy realized, oops, he’d called the wrong number.

Case closed, right? Sorry. It’s okay. Hang-up. Move on with your lives. But no, in this case they kept talking. They talked “…for hours.” Romantic so far? Right. So the next night they got on the phone and talked some more, about movies, about work, about social lives, and perhaps even about Grey’s. Needless to say, they eventually decided to meet in person and have been happily dating ever since.

Right. That’s odd. That’s out there. But it can happen.

The thing is it seems to happen one heck of a lot. A brief Google search—yes, I know I have too much time on my hands—revealed about half a dozen stories, each ending in marriage. Those half dozen were all on one page, so who knows what would happen if I kept clicking and counting.

The wrong number stories were all pretty much the same, except that one of the ones from the last few years involved text messaging. Now, I get people calling me by mistake all the time—my number spells my name (I knew a guy, okay?) and someone has the same number, and same name, with a different area code. I can’t help but wonder now how I can’t seem to turn any of those coincidence-filled wrong numbers into a conversation while all these other people are turning it into love.

Needless to say I’m a little suspicious. Who are these people that entertain strangers on the phone? More confusing to me than that is wondering how entertaining the people at these wrong numbers must be in the first few seconds to sway the poor dialer to forget about the person he/she originally wanted to contact.

So is this all a sham? Is it an attempt made by a few people here and there to get some prenuptial media attention? Maybe it’s that the guys making the calls weren’t actually dialing someone else in the first place. Perhaps they were bored and purposefully called a “wrong number” to challenge themselves to start up a conversation. And yes, maybe it’s all real.

Does anyone out there happen to know any couple who have met like this? What’s their story? What go the conversation started? If you have anything to share about that, by all means add a comment. It would also be nice to hear what you think about how real these stories sound. One or two stories are easy enough to swallow, but is this something that could really be such a regular occurrence?