Woman with Muscular Dystrophy Signed Up for Dating App on a Dare. 2 Months Later, She Found Love (Exclusive)

Mar. 15, 2025

From left: Tina Fegley and Tyler Waldman.Photo:Tina Fegley

Tina Fegley

A 38-year-old Pennsylvania woman credits a dating appfocused on the disabled and chronically ill communitieswith helping her “find love.”

Tina Fegley, who has a form ofLimb-girdle muscular dystrophyand uses a wheelchair, admits to PEOPLE that navigating the dating world hasn’t been easy.

“I feel like most guys would see the chair and be scared off or have no idea what to do,” she says.

It took a bet between Fegley and one of her friends – who was also disabled and has since died – for her to sign up forDateability, which the founders previouslytold PEOPLEhas helped hundreds of people find connections.

“She’s like, ‘Well, I’ll do it if you do it,’ " Fegley recalls. “I was like, ‘Okay.’ So I signed up and I screenshotted it and I sent it to her, and she was like, ‘I guess I have to do this now.’ ”

From left: Tina Fegley and Tyler Waldman.Tina Fegley

After joining in January, Fegley matched a month later with Tyler Waldman, a 36-year-old Maryland man who was diagnosed with epilepsy following a traumatic brain injury he sustained in a 2012 crash.

Waldman tells PEOPLE he found dating apps to be “pretty soul-sucking and they seemed to get worse every time I found myself trying them.”

He admits that he even saw Fegley on a previous dating app, but decided to reach out when he spotted her on Dateability.

“I found the right person and that’s what counts,” he says.

When the two matched, Waldman says he sent a message and the couple quickly “hit it off.”

“I don’t remember the exact content of all those messages, but it seemed like we really connected, and within a few weeks, we decided to [meet] in real life,” he adds. “We exchanged phone numbers, we started texting nonstop. We still text nonstop.”

Fegley says that Waldman took her to one of her favorite sushi restaurants in Pennsylvania for their first date. (Both share a love of food and movies.)

Tina Fegley.Tina Fegley

Waldman continues to travel to Harrisburg on the weekends to spend time with Fegley, and the two are even planning a New York City trip in December. (Waldman works for a media relations coordinator for a hospital system in Baltimore.)

“I just think it’s nice we can just kind of do things together,” Fegley, who works for the Department of Health and Human Services as an HR specialist, says.

Diagnosed with a form of Limb-girdle muscular dystrophy when she was 2 years old, Fegley says she could walk up until she was in the 10th grade, but began using a wheelchair after undergoing scoliosis surgery. And while she says that her life has not been isolating, she explains that dating has felt that way.

“People look at me [differently],” she says, sharing that on other dating sites, barely anybody really talked to her.

Waldman, Fegley tells PEOPLE, has made her feel like she can be her complete self.

“He’s so accepting and loving,” she says. “I don’t worry about him getting scared away because of my disability.”

source: people.com