This woman was surprised to learn she could fall in love over email without even meeting the person

Before there was Tinder or OKCupid, people had to get creative to date online.

Or, in the case of Adele Geraghty, it happened because of a typo.

Geraghty had spent much of her life living in upstate New York, struggling to raise six kids alone while working three jobs, when in 2001 she began pursuing her writing interests by writing a satirical column in her local paper.

In that same paper, Geraghty saw another author's column with a note that she was looking for writers for a literary magazine. Adele decided to send an email to the provided address: author54@aol.com

As it turns out, that email address had a minor typo that would majorly change Geraghty's life. Instead of author54@aol.com, it should've been author45@aol.com

But that typo put New York-based Geraghty in touch with a man named Phil all the way in England. From there, they began sending messages to each other and developed a deep relationship without ever meeting each other in person. By the time she decided to fly to England to meet Phil, she was already in love.

  

For as annoying and painful email can be, sometimes it can do some good. 

That's the theme of the first episode of "Codebreaker," the new podcast from Marketplace and Tech Insider, which asks the question: "Is email evil?"

"This was actually falling in love with someone from the inside out -there were no diversions, it was simply him and me, and who we were inside," Geraghty said in an interview on the podcast. It was a surprising development that Geraghty didn't even realize was possible at the time.

To hear the rest of Geraghty's story, you can listen to the first episode of "Codebreaker" here. And be sure to subscribe to Codebreaker in iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts.