Rajkot, Feb 25: Katreana Eldridge is now Katreana Thaker and her address in Rajkot is far away from her home in Washington. The virtual world that introduced her close to Atul, 34, turned real on Tuesday, as this 51-year-old American married her cyber-friend. Katreana wore a red salwar kameez as she and Atul got married in accordance with Hindu rites, with a handful of Atul's relatives and friends around.
Their love, which developed over long chat sessions on the Internet for over three years, brought Katreana — a divorcee and a mother of an 11-year-old girl — to Rajkot to realise her dream of being with Atul.
"I still remember the day we first communicated on the Net. I had asked her age, sex and location and she had replied: 48/female/Washington. The rest is stuff dreams are made of," says Atul, who services computer hardware.
"At my age, one needs a caring companion and I found the man I was looking for in Atul. When he proposed, I could not say no," says Katreana, who plans to stay in the US till she completes her studies before returning to Rajkot.


Close family friends say Atul's mother was not too keen on the match, as "she has two daughters to marry off."
"The difference in age between the two shocked us initially. But we agreed as he would not have been happy if had forced him to marry to a girl of our choice," says Atul's father Vasudev Thaker.