I met my boyfriend-turned-husband when some friends who knew us both introduced us, thinking we'd like each other. They'd been working hard at selling us/talking us up to the other person for a few weeks before he made an actual trip to Austin and we met in person. I read somewhere once that setups engineered by friends have a high rate of success, I guess because our friends tend to have good personality insights into us.

Whatever it was, it worked. We've been married 24 years.