Turn on your television and you’re likely to be bombarded by advertisements for EHarmony, Match.Com, and OKCupid. Love can now be found on the Internet, but finding love with someone you cannot see over lines of communication is nothing new. Here is one story that happened over the telephone line, many years ago.
Miss Lillian Imogene Chittenden, a Hello Girl for the Home Telephone Company just over the state line in Galena, Kansas, found love over the wires. When Alexander Morford, the mining editor for the Joplin Globe, discovered that the Galena line was down, he panicked. He had to find a way to transmit a story from Galena to Joplin as quickly as possible. Through the introduction of a friend he met Lillian Chittenden who helped him successfully transmit his story on time.
From that time forward Morford “demonstrated a great interest in the telephone business. As time progressed, Morford was promoted and transferred to the Globe‘s Joplin offices. It was said of Morford, “as long as the Galena-Joplin toll service continued in operation, he hadn’t talked himself out of range and the romance of the telephone and The Globe went steadily forward.”
The two married at the Christian Church of Galena, Kansas, in December 1905. Their marriage lasted until Alexander Morford’s death on February 9, 1953, in Joplin, Missouri.
Source: Joplin Globe
