Facebook Glitch Leads To Unexpected Marriage

People meet their partners online all the time these days, and Facebook is just another place that people might meet their one true love.

But there aren’t too many people who met on Facebook like Schuler Benson and Celeste Zendler.

Their love story started in October of 2009 when Schuler Benson opened Facebook on his flip phone and found that he had been automatically logged into a stranger’s account.

The Facebook account in question belonged to Celeste Zendler. Interestingly, they had absolutely nothing that would have caused the glitch. Celeste had no mutual friends with Schuler, they’d never heard of each other, and they lived 1,600 kilometres apart.

For a week Schuler was stuck in Celeste’s account, unable to log out because the glitch had resulted in an inability to see the log out button. They communicated together online as ‘This is Celeste’ and ‘This is NOT Celeste’. Finally, the real Celeste decided to try and send Schuler a friend request to see if that would cancel out the glitch. It did.

In any other situation it would seem like that would be the end of it. But although Celesta originally planned to delete Schuler as a friend as soon as the glitch was definitely fixed, she never did. Instead she found that she enjoyed his status updates, and they began an online friendship where they slowly got to know each other. As the years went on, against all the odds, that friendship blossomed into something more.

Of course, it wasn’t a fast moving relationship. Celeste says it “literally took years to go from Facebook friends to a romantic relationship”. They started dating in 2013, and Celeste moved to Arkansas to be closer to Schuler.

Then on June 11th 2014 Schuler appeared on Celeste’s Facebook account again, this time on purpose.

He wanted to propose where they had first met, which was Facebook. So, he posted status update on her account, taking a moment to point out just how crazy the odds of their relationship were.

“In the fall of 2009, Facebook already had over 175 million users. Rounding down, the odds of us connecting were less than 1 in 175,000,000. Statistically speaking, you’re about 300 times more likely to be struck by lightning. You’re more likely to be bitten by a shark”¦ on land. And you’re about as likely to win the Powerball Jackpot”¦ with the exact same numbers as someone else.”

Celeste agreed to marry Schuler, and they finally tied the knot in June of 2015.

Even though they’re married, there’s still moments where they can barely believe what happened. As Schuler said:

“I found my partner, my best friend and my great love due to a simple glitch on social media.”