LONDON, Ont. — The yellowed newspapers describe their 1968 wedding as though it were a Jetsons plot: "Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mills … introduced by machine."

"Computer was cupid: Fad leads couple to altar."

The Mills, who have been together almost 50 years, may be Canada's most enduring computer-assisted connection.

In 1966, when both were University of Western Ontario students, they each paid $3 to answer a questionnaire for a program for "Canada's foremost IBM dating system."

Unearthed by the current news editors at The Gazette, Western's student paper, the ad from the '60s calls the computer program: "The Exciting New Adventure That is Sweeping The Country."

"How does it work? The information from your questionnaire is fed into our master IBM computer along with that from thousands of others in your area," the ad reads. "Through a complex system of two-way matching, the computer does not pair you with your ideal date unless you are also his or her ideal date. This cross-checking ensures compatibility — an A-1 date."

"Best $3 I ever spent," Paul says in the couple's London home, where the two are having a morning coffee as they look at the old articles.

Paul now has a shock of white hair. The Buddy Holly glasses he wore on his wedding day are gone and Bev's pixie cut of the 1960s is now a ponytail with streaks of silver. That long-ago computer connection has led to children, grandchildren, and twisting career paths, with stops in the lemon soap industry, the Toronto Public Library, and the Canadian folk music scene, with the likes of Stan Rogers and Sharon Lois and Bram for company.

Back in the 1960s, you typically met potential dates on the fraternity circuit, classes, or playing bridge in the cafeteria. The pub was also popular, but the drinking age was 21. Computers certainly weren't meant for dating. They were so large they took up entire rooms.

"It wasn't mainstream," Bev says. "Most people didn't think about them."

Except for Paul, who was studying engineering at Western, and had a painful awareness of how computers worked: you'd write a program on a piece of paper, take it to the key punch operator, who typed it in, and then you walked across campus to take the stack of resulting punch cards to the computer room. ("Sometimes I would trip and the cards would fall and I'd have to pick them all up," he says.) The next morning, you received a printout (from a printer as big as a fridge) to see if it worked.

"It usually didn't," he says of his own programs.

"I guess a couple of our punches worked," Bev chimes in.

That fall, Bev's roommate talked her into filling out the questionnaire. It was your typical assortment of multiple-choice questions, except for that one about the dog.

"If you're driving on a street and a puppy jumps in front of your car, what do you do?" Paul recalls in an earlier phone call.

"Oh dear — this is hard to admit, I think I said I would hit the dog," Bev says. "I think the options were, you were going to swerve and hit a pedestrian."

Questions in the ad from The Gazette archives also ask people to rate their attractiveness on a scale of "very beautiful" to "unattractive," their drinking, and their smoking habits.

After sending in her answers, Bev received a list with six names and numbers — but no Paul. Paul got three, with Bev listed as number two. After a failed date with his number 1, he called her.

"Some computer told me you were my ideal date," he said — a quote that later made its way across the country when their futuristic marriage made headlines.

Back in the fall of 1966, they talked on the phone and realized they already might know each other. Paul was in a folk group called the Balladeers, whom Bev had seen at an outdoor concert earlier that summer.

"Oh, I loved them," she says. "They had great harmonies. Paul was sort of the comic, he'd have the funny lines."

They went for coffee at a diner called the Campus Hi-fi — which still looks the same, Paul says, pulling out his iPad to show a picture of the purple and white awning hanging at the front.

Paul proposed on Bev's 21st birthday. One of their wedding guests told a reporter about their unusual matchup, and the story was picked up across the country: "Computer led to marriage," and "Computer dating precedes nuptials," said clippings sent in from family and friends across Canada.

Jobs were plentiful when the couple graduated. They moved to Hamilton, where Paul worked for Procter & Gamble as a chemical engineer.

"Sunlight had come out with Lemon Fresh, and a high-level meeting was called. I was sitting there with all these really important guys in suits, and they were all talking about soap," he says. "I was sitting there thinking, 'Why am I here?' I went back and put some lemon perfume in Joy, and they put it on the market, and that was my contribution to society."

He decided to return to grad school in London with hopes of becoming a professor.

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

"Bev was right here with me and said, 'OK,'" he says. "Bless her heart."

Bev worked at the university library and Paul was ensconced in the coffee house scene, hanging out with musicians like Stan Rogers (and later producing his records). It was then he discovered his true calling, in a way only an engineer can.

"I sat down with a graph paper and plotted my interests and aptitudes, to figure out what I wanted to do," he says. "I came to the conclusion I wanted to be a record producer. I announced that to Bev, and she said, 'OK.' "

By that spring, Paul had a music production job at the CBC and the couple moved to Toronto. A daughter and a son came along. Bev worked at the David Mirvish bookstore on weekends and later took a full-time position at the library. "It was really clear at this point Bev wanted to go out of the house," Paul says. "I said, 'Even if your entire salary has to go to paying for nannies, it is worth it.' "

(Her salary didn't all go to the nanny, she clarifies.)

"He also supported me through many changes in my life as well, even if it was just going from one library branch to another, or going into human resources," she says.

At CBC, Paul worked in radio, producing "Touch the Earth" with Sylvia Tyson, and working as a drama producer in the 1980s. He was later the director of planning for radio and, in a freelance role, a co-musical director for "Skinnamarink TV" with Sharon, Lois and Bram. He continued to produce records.

When he was promoted to management, "he was not a happy guy," Bev says. "Who wants to live with an unhappy person?"

Paul left CBC to produce records full time.

At his home studio, photos of him working with Canadian folk legends line the walls. Platinum and gold records from Sharon Lois and Bram, such as Mainly Mother Goose, form a border.

(Back in the late 1990s, when Paul wanted to add a studio in their Scarborough home, Bev asked him to build a business case. "I have to insert here that Bev is the financial mind of this family — she handles the books, and God bless her.")

After more than 40 years in Toronto, the couple returned to London last year. They keep busy with music, concerts and grandchildren, and every year Paul puts together the Stan Rogers tribute at Hugh's Room in Toronto, among other tribute shows. Rogers' "45 Years" is their song. Paul sang it to his wife at a resort near Barrie for their 45th anniversary.

Bev makes an exaggerated sigh and pats her heart.

"I made a lot of points," he says.

"I just look at Bev sometimes in the evening and think, 'How can I be so lucky as to be still with this woman? And I just say, 'I love you.'"

"Yes he does," she says, smiling at him.

"I sometimes have to pinch myself," he says.