A woman has revealed how she found the love of her life on LinkedIn – explaining how what started as a job interview turned into nine years of marriage with a partner who stood by her side as she battled a devastating cancer diagnosis.
Katie Ortman Doble, from Colorado, is a headhunter who was in her early 30s in 2013 and living in Denver.
She was proud that in her 20s she had become “the queen of networking,” as she described in an essay for Business insider — becoming particularly adept at LinkedIn, with the professional platform being “the first website I open at the start of each workday,” she added.
But, Katie continued, I was perpetually single for most of her young life. I went out often, but I rarely made it to the second date.’
“Maybe I was too picky, but I wanted sparks and could never find them,” she wrote.
Katie Ortman Doble knew LinkedIn well from her job as a headhunter, but never expected the professional networking app to connect her with her husband
She met her current husband, Nick, after contacting him via LinkedIn to recruit a potential recruit from him, and then a hiring manager at a local company.
That all changed when one day Katie contacted the hiring manager of a local company to offer a potential recruit to him.
His name was Nick and he seemed new to the area, an expat from Britain.
‘It doesn’t look like you’re from around here. I hope you enjoy it!’ she finished her first message to him.
From there, the exchange began and culminated in Katie making an open offer for the two to meet in person.
“If you ever want to grab a cup of coffee or a beer, I love networking,” she signed off.
After reading Katie’s message, Nick apparently told a colleague at the time, “I think I just got a date from LinkedIn.”
The couple made plans to meet on Saturday afternoon at a “trendy cocktail bar in downtown Denver,” Katie recalled.
Although she had previously agreed to numerous in-person networking events, this felt different, as she wrote: “After all, I often meet new clients for a coffee or a beer, although it was usually the former and never on Saturdays. .’
After the “sparks” flew on the first date, Nick proposed to Katie within a year, on Thanksgiving
But while the couple was planning their wedding, Katie was also dealing with a terminal cancer diagnosis
Although Katie was initially given 16 months to live, she was helped by her doctor father, who pointed her in the right direction in enrolling in clinical trials – which ultimately saved her life.
She was shocked by his description of his shirt, as he had described it as “burgundy and blue plaid.”
“My gay stepbrother once told me that if a man uses a color that falls outside the standard Crayola box, he’s probably gay. I wasn’t even sure what ‘claret’ was,” Katie said.
But, she told herself, “the reason I was so happy there,” she said, was mainly “because I like meeting new people.”
‘Then he came in, with his very long torso, legs for days and a lovely dimple in the chin sticking out from under his short beard. ‘Please don’t be gay,’ I thought, smiling as we first made eye contact, and I discovered that burgundy is actually just burgundy,” Katie recalled.
Katie then recalled how their conversation on that first date “flowed effortlessly as we talked about our jobs, our families, and where we came from… Neither of us stopped smiling the entire evening.”
At the same time, she was reluctant to share that she had been diagnosed with uveal melanoma – a rare form of cancer in her left eyeball with just a two percent chance of spreading.
Yet other men she had gone on dates with had suggested that the diagnosis made her unfit to actively pursue long-term romantic prospects.
But when she “mentioned” to Nick that she had sold her red scooter in anticipation of losing the vision in her left eye due to her cancer, he seemed “more upset that I didn’t have my cool red scooter anymore than the fact that I once had cancer.’
The date ended with a kiss — and, Katie fondly recalled, “the sparks.”
The following year the two became inseparable and soon met each other’s friends and family.
Nick recruited Katie’s sisters to pick out a ring with him, setting in motion plans to propose to her on Thanksgiving.
Despite their harrowing battle with cancer, Katie and Nick continued to travel and plan for a shared future together
The couple even got a dog, even though Katie’s lifespan was uncertain during her battle with cancer
At the same time, Katie received devastating news that the cancer had spread and now, with an ultrasound showing twelve new cancerous lesions on her liver, she was faced with a terminal diagnosis.
“My sisters frantically texted Nick suggesting he postpone the engagement,” Katie continued.
Without hesitation, he replied, “It doesn’t change anything… She’s still the girl I want to marry.”
‘The day he asked her to marry him was the most emotional day of my life.
‘The following week I received confirmation that the melanoma had spread and that I had sixteen months to live. I was filled with conflicting emotions.
‘It is sheer terror to receive a stage 4, incurable cancer diagnosis with a shelf life of 16 months.
“To be asked to spend forever, however long that may be, with the man you love is pure joy.”
“I felt hopeless and hopeful,” Katie recalled of the earth-shattering time in her life.
And there was indeed hope for Katie. Although her chief oncologist gave her less than a year and a half to live, her physician father immediately began seeking out clinical trials for which Katie might qualify.
After final surgery in 2021 to remove a ‘rogue’ tumor, Katie was finally declared cancer-free
In January 2015, Katie enrolled in a course in New York at Memorial Sloan Kettering (MSK).
The following month she married Nick.
‘The clinical trial at MSK stabilized my tumors for eight months. When I experienced a tumor growth that prevented me from participating in the trial, I enrolled in my second trial in Denver. This game of whack-a-mole would go on for seven years,” she continued.
She eventually participated in a total of four clinical trials, as well as “two liver embolizations, a gamma knife when it spread to my brain, a laparoscopic liver resection procedure, and surgery to remove half of my liver.”
“Each trial and treatment gave Nick and I more time together,” Katie said.
“We spent our thirties in fight or flight mode, but we never gave up hope. We kept making plans. We built a house, we got a puppy and we traveled the world.”
In 2021, Katie underwent one final surgery to remove one last ‘rogue tumor’ – and suddenly she was finally cancer-free.
She concluded, “I’m not suggesting we use LinkedIn as a dating app, but we go through life making connections with strangers. And sometimes, when we least expect it, those serendipitous connections keep us going.”