A lady has to look after herself when the only contact with a prospective date has been a flurry of emails and one awkward phone call.

After all, Sarah Adland had been out with her fair share of unsuitable suitors including meetings arranged through lonely heart columns, the internet and Teletext - and feared her latest would be another disaster.

So after warning Steve Cooper - whose face she had only seen in a grainy photograph - not to mess with her, she insisted her date-to-be stood in a certain spot outside Hove Town Hall so she could drive by and assess him, ready to flee if necessary.

But, even though she almost managed to crash her car, the date did go ahead and the couple are now married.

"I told him if I liked the look of him and he wasn't an axe murderer, we would go to Churchill Square in Brighton. But if not, I was off," she said.

"I had been out with too many fat, ugly trolls. Most of them were lovely guys. I just didn't fancy them. But I almost crashed the car when I first saw Steve - he was so good-looking, like a young Sting, only with bigger ears."

Not only are Steve, 28, and Sarah, 34, now happily married but one earlier date she ditched is now engaged to one of her best friends.

Steve and Sarah's successful romance shows much-maligned internet chatrooms and message boards are not simply the domain of predatory perverts and fraudsters.

The pair came together through the internet service provider AOL.

Steve looked up fellow AOL users based in Hove and started sending Sarah emails.

Straight away she tried to warn him off.

"I told him not to mess with me. I had a young daughter and wanted to settle down and thought he would back off. But he said that was fine and we kept in touch."

She believes Steve's painfully shy nature means they would not have been able to build up a rapport so quickly without the internet.

"I know full well he would never have had the courage to approach me. Also if I'd met him in person to start with, I would never have let him get a word in."

After six months of email chats, he persuaded her to phone him, though their brief chat was not particularly successful. Sarah had dialled 141 beforehand to withhold her number.

Before meeting for the first time, she told friends and family where she was going, who she was meeting and what time. She insisted Steve accompany her shopping in Churchill Square for their first date - and that he paid for lunch, of course.

Even when they started seeing each other, she barred him from meeting her daughter from a previous relationship for several months.

"I did not want to confuse my daughter Katie by rushing to introduce possible boyfriends to her when I did not feel certain there was enough in common to build a future."

But she and Steve got on so well, they moved in together within two months of meeting and were married in Gibraltar within another two months.

They now have a 15-month-old son Charlie, as well as Sarah's five-year-old daughter Katie.

Among the guests at their wedding were Sarah's friend Claire Goldfinch and her fiance Paul Salmon.

Sarah and Claire had been on a double blind date when Paul was accompanying Sarah.

But she said: "He was another nice guy but just not for me. Claire liked the look of him so I said, 'Have him'."