These success stories will give you hope. By Anna Iovine on May 21, 2026
If you’re on the single side of TikTok right now, you know how brutal the dating landscape is — so much so that people use war-like euphemisms for it. “Being in the trenches” is code for being uncoupled and swiping. Meanwhile, “catching the last chopper out of ‘nam” means that, like New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani, you did find love on The Apps™. It’s hard out here, if the date recap videos have anything to say about it.
And yet, like Mamdani and NYC’s first lady Rama Duwaji, there are those who made it out of the apps both alive, coupled up, and with their faith in love still intact.
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Nearly a third of couples who were married in 2025 met on an app, according to an informal study by wedding planning website The Knot. It’s a stark difference from 1995, when just two percent of couples married after meeting online, according to a Stanford University report. SEE ALSO: Dating apps feel broken. But these couples found love anyway.
By 2035, more couples will meet online than in person, and by 2037, half the babies born will likely have parents who met online, according to reports. Those who’ve made the leap to marriage after meeting online say the key to finding their match is moving at your own pace, freeing yourself from stigmas, and bringing your authentic self to your profile.
For those who found love in what so many believe is a (dare I say it) hopeless place, I’m curious: What’s their secret? I myself was on dating apps for seven years, but ended up meeting my fiancée on then-Twitter of all places. I interviewed four couples who met on the apps to find out how they met amid ghosters, pen pals, and potential scammers we hear about on DatingTok, and eventually found their way down the aisle together. While their advice isn’t limited to online dating, I did learn that every couple’s story is unique, regardless of how they met.
Ashley and Matt
Movers Ashley and Matt, 37 and 42, met on OkCupid in 2011 and, “in true dating app fashion, we did not actually meet for another year,” Ashley joked in an interview with Mashable. But before then, when they matched, Ashley thought Matt was attractive in his pictures and was drawn to his sense of humor. Matt, meanwhile, recalls being attracted to how she was dressed in one photo (but it was actually a costume for a friend’s student film). He also liked that she was a native New Yorker and, at the time, writing every day. They messaged each other for a year, though, primarily on Google Chat. In 2012, Ashley spontaneously asked to meet up in Brooklyn, as she was going there for a show. SEE ALSO: App fatigue is real. I tested the best dating apps of 2026 to find the ones that really work.
“I was living in Manhattan at the time, and Matt was in Brooklyn,” she explained. “So it was basically an ocean apart.” While Ashley and Matt have been married since 2020, that first date didn’t lead to fireworks. “I distinctly remember Matt ‘raising the roof’ at one point. I was, I don’t know, 23, and something wasn’t connecting.” She figured that Matt was cute and fun, but they may not have been on the same page at that time.
“I was living in Manhattan at the time, and Matt was in Brooklyn…so it was basically an ocean apart.” – Ashley
While they didn’t meet up in person again until much later, they kept messaging — on Google Chat, over email, sometimes even over the phone for hours. “It was never the right timing,” said Matt (who didn’t quite remember the roof-raising). “Either we were in another relationship or it just wasn’t right. But somehow the distance between us made our communication more intimate and honest, because we didn’t have any mutual friends, we weren’t in each other’s lives.”
Slow burn: From OKCupid to GChat
Their chemistry built over time, usually over GChat and email, in sharp contrast to the “love at first sight” many dating app users seek. “We just had this chemistry and this unique relationship that developed in GChat,” Matt said. While he was in his late 20s and early 30s, and in and out of different relationships, Ashley was always at the back of his mind