Chicago ? Jay and Christina Lorance first met in an MSN chat room in May 1996, when the Internet, or even the idea of communicating electronically with a stranger, was an unfamiliar concept to many Americans.

Their online interaction led to four months of telephone calls and snail-mail letters, culminating in a face-to-face meeting in Colorado. Jay showed up with a ring. One year and four months later, they were married.

“We shocked a lot of people,” said Christina Lorance, 41. “I’m from New York and he’s from Oklahoma, so the first question everyone had was, ‘How did you meet?’ … When we said the Internet, their eyes would bug out. They didn’t even think it was true.”

Digital culture has changed drastically since the Lorances’ first virtual meeting. Online dating is now an accepted and commonplace way to meet someone, having largely shed its stigma as an option for only socially stunted nerds. Match.com, one of the leading Web sites, celebrated its 15th anniversary in April.

While advanced technology can’t guarantee in-person chemistry, that hasn’t stopped dozens of new offerings from touting their matchmaking algorithms or catering to a demographic niche.

Michelle Teplitz, a 29-year-old Connecticut native, was drawn to JDate.com, a site geared toward Jewish singles, because she wanted to meet someone with similar values.

“It weeds out the people you wouldn’t want to talk to in a bar,” said Teplitz, who met her husband of three years on JDate. “You know when you’re on this site, (you’re meeting) people who, for the most part, are interested in meeting someone they want to spend their life with.”

Online dating has grown into big business. Match.com is part of IAC/Interactive Corp. and recently became the exclusive dating service on Yahoo, while eHarmony has acquired other Web properties related to weddings and parenting, including Weddingbee and JustMommies. Web-based dating also is taking on new forms, such as mobile applications and services within Facebook.

Another twist on the model was launched this year through WinkVid, the brainchild of Jordan Fulghum and Jake Lumetta. Their Chicago-based company offers online speed dating through webcams, with each date lasting four minutes.

“This stigma that’s been around for the last decade is really starting to be erased because people’s lives are moving online, and they’re seeing the real benefits of social networks and of these technologies that enable you to meet people,” Fulghum said.

A video chat may help bridge that difficult gap between online compatibility and in-person chemistry. Still, there’s no predicting how a romantic relationship will develop offline. Although some dating sites brag about their ability to match up life partners, other services acknowledge their limitations.

“I really think of our responsibility as ‘no bad first dates,’ which seems like a low bar, but the reason is we can’t promise you a soul mate,” said Sam Yagan, co-founder of OKCupid. “That’s ridiculous. That’s chemistry and what happens when you see each other.”

The simplest reason for online dating’s emergence into the mainstream is that more Americans are digitally literate. The age-old practice of meeting and courting a romantic partner has moved online as consumers conduct more of their lives on the Web.

A 2006 study by the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project reported that nearly 7 million American adults have gone out with someone they met online. That number surely has gone up since, said Andrew Fiore, a doctoral candidate at the University of California-Berkeley who has studied online dating since 2003.

“As soon as you talk about 7 million people going on dates, they can’t possibly all be computer geeks,” Fiore said. “If you look at the demographics, people using online dating look a lot like people who are on the Internet in general.”

These typical users include Chicagoans Casey Zgutowicz, 32, and Micaela De Alba, 30, a recently engaged couple who met on eHarmony.

Online dating “is good in the sense you’re peeling back the onion,” Zgutowicz said. He said completing eHarmony’s intricate personality questionnaire was a “grueling process” but helpful, because “you know you have a similar foundation” before meeting in person.

Zgutowicz and De Alba, who are planning a June 2011 wedding, said they no longer think their “how we met” story is novel.

“We’ve moved beyond it,” De Alba said.

Positive word of mouth also has helped boost the credibility of online dating sites. According to the 2006 Pew survey, 30 million adults reported knowing someone who’s been in a long-term relationship or married someone he or she met online.

Still, the stigma exists for some people. Holly Brunner, a 32-year-old pathology assistant in Washington, said she met a man via eHarmony who told his friends they met in the emergency room, where she was summoned to perform a biopsy on a liver tumor discovered after a motorcycle accident landed him in the hospital.

Aside from that odd hiccup, Brunner said she’s pleased with her eHarmony experience and is in a relationship with someone she met via the site in 2008.

“I can’t imagine any other way of dating,” she said.

Sometimes, the spark simply isn’t there. Samuel DiMatteo, 76, used Yahoo Personals for several years but is going to let his subscription lapse because he didn’t find “that click” with the handful of women he met.

“Probably, if I were younger, it would be better,” said DiMatteo, a River Grove, Ill., resident. “When you’re 76, most (people) are set in their ways.”

On the other end of the age spectrum, members of the Web generation say they’re fluent in how to read cues from someone whose body language is hidden behind a computer screen.

“When I see how people type, I can immediately read their personalities: their grammar, lingo, the Net-speak they use,” said Iris Febres, 22, who met her boyfriend of more than one year on OKCupid.

Febres and her boyfriend live across the country from one another, so they use Skype to keep in touch.