How I met my wife

Blaine Phelps
2 min readMay 27, 2024

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TRIGGER WARNING: There may be the use of some words in this post that may trigger some readers.

I met my wife on a blind date. Specifically, I was living in Israel (working for a hi-tech company) and she was working in New York City — less than a block from the World Trade Center that was destroyed in 2001.

I was flying into NYC for a trade show at the Javits Center to introduce our product to the world, specifically the media that were attending and would (hopefully) be stopping by our booth.

I worked for a small business unit (six of us) that was introducing the USB Flash Drive (we had the patent) to consumers and companies alike.

It was going to be just me (remember, we were small and had very little budget) and someone from our PR agency.

We had planned on having a (**TRIGGER WARNING**) “booth babe” to help us in the booth (a booth babe is a nice looking woman who hands out brochures, answers questions, and smiles — since 80%+ of attendee’s to the shows are males, a nice looking female in the booth will bring in many).

The booth babe that we had booked didn’t show up.

Backstory: The night before, I had gone on a date with a young lady (the day I flew in). We both agreed to see each other again and agreed to go out the next night — which was going to be a short night as the event was going to be open from 4pm to 8pm that night — and then we were to go out to dinner (after the event).

Since the young lady worked in the city (and lived out on Long Island), she asked if she could also attend the event and would just “hang out” until the event was over.

Present: I got the young lady a pass to the media event and she went with me to our booth. Once we learned that the booth babe wasn’t going to make it, the young lady said “I can do it! Just tell me about the product a bit and I will wine & dine the press until you can meet with them”.

So we did. And she did awesome! The PR Agency rep said “She worked out better than a booth babe AND we didn’t have to pay her!”

Needless to say, after the event we went out to dinner and planned another date for the next night (just a regular show day, 10am to 4pm). After that, I had to fly onto LA for another event.

But, every time I flew into the U.S., I always made sure to fly through NYC and spend at least one night there so I could continue to “wooo” the young lady. I did so well, I ended up marrying her six years later and have now been married (to her) for almost 20 years.

She always been my “booth babe”.

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Blaine Phelps

Lucky enough to have traveled the world and gained experiences that I like to share - and I do it now, through life coaching, mentoring, and teaching.