I was on 'The Love Connection,' one of the first reality dating shows. My date was a dud, but he introduced me to my best friend.

• When I moved to Los Angeles in 1993, I was on "Love Connection," one of the first dating shows.
• My date and I did not make a love connection, but he introduced me to a friend of his.

When I first moved to Los Angeles in 1993, my No. 1 goal — aside from attending college — was to sit on the couch on "Love Connection, " one of the first reality dating shows,

I used to watch it all the time when I lived at home in New Jersey. Contestants got to choose between three potential dates, and though the dates weren't filmed, if your date went well, you were invited to sit on the couch and dish about your night out with the host, Chuck Woolery.

I auditioned for the show and was over the moon when I got the call telling me I was in. At best, I thought I would meet a guy and have a fun experience (and possibly be on TV!). I didn't think the date would end up changing my life, but that's exactly what happened. Through the experience, I met someone amazing — but it wasn't my date, and I didn't meet a new romantic partner. Here's what happened.

The date itself was mediocre

Like any reality dating show, there were episodes where some contestants experienced nightmarish dates. I had high hopes that my date would be a good one, even though there were early warning signs that this wasn't going to go the distance.

Before our date, we had an off-camera phone conversation to coordinate things, and it felt a little stilted. He was also hard to get in touch with; these were the days before everyone had cellphones. Landlines were the way to go.

During my interview, I'd said I was interested in a David Justice type, who was a baseball player for the Atlanta Braves at the time. When we met, he was a dead ringer for the gospel singer BeBe Winans. For our date, we were supposed to go horseback riding in Griffith Park and then have dinner.

He was new in town and didn't have a job or place of his own yet; he also didn't have a car and had borrowed one, so he was late to pick me up. Very late. We arrived at the park almost two hours after our intended time, and he got lost on the way there. We drove around for what felt like forever and never found the stables, so it was off to dinner.

By this time, I was less than thrilled at the way things were going. We didn't seem to have a lot to talk about, and getting lost had only made things more awkward. On the phone, he had mentioned a Jersey girl he'd met since moving to Los Angeles, and he brought her up again during our date.

Maybe it was a way of trying to connect with me, or he was trying to talk over the loud sound of my stomach grumbling from hunger (or both?), but he kept saying that he thought we should meet because he was positive that we'd hit it off. Honestly, I thought it was weird that he kept trying to push this person on me, especially because he didn't yet know me well. Just because we were both from the same state didn't mean we'd get along. Reluctantly, I took her number.

On the ride home from our date, we promised not to trash one another to the producers. Honestly, he hadn't given me a reason to — he was a nice guy, he just wasn't the one for me. The way the show worked, only the "chooser" would sit on the couch with Chuck as a guest — and I wanted to be on the couch. (My goals in life were small at the time.) If you said you had a good date, the person would be backstage and appear in a little square, chiming in about the date.

We reported back to the producers and said we had a good time, so I was invited to sit on the couch with Chuck; I remember that he was less than impressed that my date had no job and was couch-surfing. But we were still rewarded with an $80 stipend to go on a second date, which I believe they gave to him directly. I never saw him again. Instead, I ended up calling his friend about a week later; I didn't want to be rude, and I knew he'd also talked me up to her.

It wasn't a love connection, but it was a best-friend connection

I almost hate to admit that he was right, but we did hit it off —instantly! It turned out that we'd actually attended the same college at the same time but never met, and we'd moved to Los Angeles within months of each other. After our initial call, we hung out and went shopping at Melrose Trading Post, which is like a big yard sale in the parking lot of Melrose High School. A few weeks later, I invited her to attend a Thanksgiving dinner at my aunt's house with me. We were having marathon phone conversations, complaining about or celebrating whatever guy we were seeing at the time. We became best friends; she was my new partner in crime.

After the 1994 Northridge earthquake, not even a year after we met, she moved back to Jersey. We would call each other from our respective jobs and speak throughout the day. We probably kept Ma Bell in business with our long-distance calls. How we never got in trouble at work for what surely must have been exorbitant phone bills is beyond me, but I'm thankful to our accounting departments for the oversight!

Our relationship has crossed from personal to professional, which has been fun. We bonded over having celebrity crushes and wrote a book together about how to meet your favorite celebrity, called "The Fan Survival Guide: 50 Ways to Meet Your Favorite Celebrity." The book became a Teen People's Book Club pick. We're both avid readers and big fans of Judy Blume, and we got to meet her while promoting it at a book festival.

When I got pregnant in 2001 and moved back to New Jersey, we bought a duplex together. I lived in the upper unit, and she lived downstairs. It was like a sitcom; we were two single moms making their way in the world. We shared Sunday dinners, and our kids (she had her first in 1996) ran — or toddled — up and down the steps between our units.

Life ebbs and flows, but good things always come back around

As with many friendships, ours waxed and waned as we raised kids (she had a second one in 2009), advanced in our careers, and lived life. After a few years of living together, I moved back to Los Angeles. We sold our place. She got married. Our lives stopped intersecting as much as they once did. But life has a funny way of working out, and sometimes, the things that are most important to us come full circle. She ended up returning to Los Angeles — this time, with her family. As fate would have it, she now lives a few blocks away from me.

This November, it will be 30 years since we first met. We can still talk for hours, but the topics close to our hearts have changed. This time they're about our adult kids and menopause symptoms (which my 21-year-old daughter says I talk way too much about). I haven't spoken to my date in decades, but he reached out to her on Facebook a few years ago. He's married with kids, and I consider him the best best-friend wingman I ever had.