An engaged couple in Coral Springs have more in common than their love for each other. They also share the same first and last name.
It began on April of 2008 when a curious girl went typed her name on the popular social networking site Facebook.
20-year-old Kelly Hildebrandt or "Baby Doll" as her fiancée now affectionately calls her went on the site and discovered a "pleasant" looking guy who shares her name. She decided it would be fun to reach out and say hello and see if they were related.
"I just searched my name to see what else was out there. I was just curious," said Kelly "Baby Doll" Hildebrandt. "I was pleasantly surprised when I saw the search list. I just sent him a message."
They were grateful when they found out they weren't related.
"I thought she was pretty cute and we got to talking and I was thinking I had family in Florida and we found out there's no relation," the man, Kelly Hildebrandt, 24, told CBS4. "But through it all we built a friendship."
For the next three months, the couple exchanged emails and that eventually led to long phone conversations. There was some flirtation, the male Kelly Hildebrandt admits, but he was too shy to come right out and say he wanted take a flight from Lubbock, Tex., where he lived to visit her at her Coral Springs home with the intention of dating.
"I guess I just finally told her, 'If you get your scuba certification, then I'll come down there and dive with you,'" he said.
And she did. They were immediately smitten with each other.
On Dec. 13th, nearly eight months since the girl sent that first message to the man who shares her name, he proposed at the beach. She said yes. The couple plans to marry in October.
Kelly Hildebrandt, the man, moved from Lubbock, Tex., two weeks ago, while his fiancee works on completing her education degree at Palm Beach Community College.
Since then, they've discovered that sharing the same name also has some complications and benefits.
On a trip to Universal Studios, the male Hildebrandt was about to pay for the tickets when the clerk asked him for an ID. When he discovered he had forgotten his ID, his fiancée simply pulled out hers and there was no problem.
"I was like, 'Oh wait, this could be dangerous,'" he said.
A trip on a cruise ship almost got canceled when the travel agent deleted one ticket from the system.
"They thought someone had plugged the [same] information twice," she said.
And there's always confusion when the mail arrives.
RSS
My Yahoo