I DM-ed a man on LinkedIn and we were engaged a year later. Then I was given 16 months to live. [Video]

I didn’t set out to start a romantic relationship on LinkedIn.

I’m a headhunter, and my job is to help companies find candidates and fill open roles. LinkedIn is the first website I open at the start of each workday. It’s also a digital Rolodex for a friend hoarder like me.

In my 20s, I watched my connections climb to over 1,000, then 3,000, then 5,000. I was the queen of networking, but I was perpetually single. I dated — frequently — but I rarely made it to the second date. Perhaps I was being too picky, but I wanted sparks and could never seem to find them.

In July 2013, by then in my early 30s and living in Denver, my colleague shared the résumé of a copyeditor whose background matched the description of a local job posting I’d seen that day. I looked up the company on LinkedIn and scrolled through the Denver employees to find the …