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With a Protective Side

Nicholas A. Bogdan had an idea of his perfect wife. "She had to like computer games, she had to like to read, she had to be interested in Dungeons and Dragons, and she had to be single," said the woman who eventually filled out the ticket. "I had everything on the list except the single part, so he set about to make that happen."

It was 1989. He'd come by as her shift ended at Roy Rogers in Hightstown, N.J. He'd tell her how great she was and how she ought to get out of her bad relationship and go out with him instead.

On their first date, his protective side showed in the Dungeons. When her band of adventurers met monsters, he announced that her character was stuck in a locked room.

"I said, `Look, I'm your girlfriend in real life, not in the game. Let me have some fun, too,' " she recalled.

She became Dorothy Bogdan in 1997. He was 34 last year, a computer operator for Marsh & McLennan. They had two children.



Profile published in THE NEW YORK TIMES on September 10, 2002.