20 MONTEREY COUNTY WEEKLY FEBRUARY 13-19, 2025 www.montereycountynow.com ing along,” Smith says. The first major competitor was Yahoo! Personals. It was a paid internet service that launched in 1997. Craigslist, which was free, also took a bite out of revenues as it grew in popularity after starting in 1995. TPI partnered with Match.com in 2003 for about a year, to run ads from participating newspapers on the internet, including those from the Weekly. TPI officials ended the “experiment” in 2004, according to a blog post from the Association of Alternative Newsmedia published at the time. (Yahoo! Personals merged with Match.com in 2010 and disappeared.) As the number of personal ads began to lag, the “I Saw You” section was added to the Weekly’s personals, Smith says. It was similar to Craigslist’s “Missed Connections,” where people could describe chance meetings with wistful hopes of reconnecting. Also during this time, an alternative newspaper chain, New Times Media, launched backpage.com, a similar classified ad site to Craigslist. Craigslist shut down its personal ads section in 2010 after pressure from critics and attorneys generals who claimed it was supporting prostitution. Backpage resisted removing its personal ads until 2017, when it eliminated them right before a Congressional hearing. Smith remembers that “the press guys,” the workers at the plant that printed the newspaper, always read the personal ads first, especially “I Saw You,” which made for great entertainment. It was no wonder: Weekly readers’ personal ads were often creative and funny. Some were quirky, others titillating or a tad risque. Although there were the cliches, including lots of people professing their love for walks on the beach, Smith says. There are standouts in the Weekly’s archives. One pithy ad from 1990 reads: “WANTED: Good woman who can clean and cook fish, dig worms, sew and who owns a good fishing boat and motor. Please include photo of boat and motor.” Like so many other corners of society forever changed by the internet, personal ads eventually fell by the wayside—the Weekly discontinued them around 2007. They may have served as entertainment for some, but they proved a successful way to find a mate for others. Smith says during his time as classifieds manager, he met people who came in to place regular ads who would say, oh by the way, they met their significant other through the Weekly’s personal ads. Looking back on their time together, there are a lot of fond memories for Love and Bellone, although there are hard ones too. “We’ve had a heckuva time,” Love says. “It’s been a lot of ups and downs. We’ve lost a lot of people…we’ve lost a lot of, you know, life, but we’re still together. “Do you know that we’re not married anymore?” Love and Bellone divorced after about five years of marriage. A series of bad luck and financial pressures led to the decision. They didn’t see each other for two-and-a-half months. The day they went to court to finalize the divorce, they were both dressed up. They looked at one another with new eyes. “I called him and said, I really like you and I miss you, and you looked really good,” Love remembers. They moved back in together and since then have definitely been together ever since. One of their “biggest beefs” in the early years, Love says, is that Bellone was more serious than Love, who is outwardly spunky. Bellone was more the tall, silent type, who didn’t laugh at Love’s jokes. “And I thought I was pretty funny, but he wasn’t laughing. Now he laughs. Now he puts up with me,” she says. “She makes me laugh when she’s just so goofy,” Bellone says. “I think we needed those parts of each other. She needed my discipline and I needed to loosen up.” Bellone ponders if it was coincidence that they met through the personals, or if it was meant to be. Love recalls becoming “one of the weirdos” who place personal ads and worrying whether Bellone was a weirdo for answering. Maybe, she thought, they were equally weird. “And sure enough, we’re both just as weird,” Love says. ove & ating “I liked him immediately.” ♦ 3 Card Poker ♠ Century 21st No Bust Black Jack ♣ Texas Hold’em ♥ Baccarat FULL BAR! 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