Not for cis straight men: the dating app that launched a thousand queer love stories

Caché Owens and Cynthia Velásquez reached the same conclusion within days of meeting: they wanted to spend the rest of their lives together. The pair first started talking on Instagram in January, through a popular account that offered a contemporary version of traditional newspaper personal ads. Owens, a 29-year-old artist and professor, had never had much luck on dating apps, but the Personals page was different. It did not use photos, but instead featured a long list of bios of queer and trans people looking for internet friends, lovers or partners across the globe. Velásquez and Owens' DMs turned into daily phone calls, they got engaged in April, Velásquez moved from Los Angeles to North Carolina to be with Owens in May, and the two are getting married next month, just before the one-year anniversary of their first Instagram chat.