The moment we met I had an eerie feeling that I had seen him before. When I realized why, I feared telling the truth would ruin everything

When Paloma Del Real first began chatting with Aaron Lyon on MySpace in 2005, she had the uncanny feeling that she somehow knew him.

Lyon's dashing good looks - piercing blue eyes, wide smile and dark hair - were deeply familiar to her but she just couldn't place him.

'Right from the beginning, when I saw his face, I thought "I know this guy,"' Del Real told the Daily Mail in an exclusive interview. 'I would tell him, "I think I know you," but it was impossible.'

The two lived 6,000 miles apart, Lyon, then 31, in Los Angeles and Del Real, then 22, in her hometown, Malaga, Spain.

In fact, Lyon had visited Malaga 18 years earlier. It was the memory of that happy family vacation that prompted him to friend Del Real on MySpace. He often sent such requests to strangers who came from cities he'd visited around the world - a not uncommon practice in the early days of social media.

Perhaps, he suggested, they had crossed paths back then. Del Real would have been just four years old - she was certain it wasn't that, just as certain as she was that she'd seen this handsome stranger before.

The connection felt so instant. And so they started communicating regularly until soon they were in touch daily. 

Then, a few weeks into their burgeoning relationship Lyon shared that he had been a teen model, and Del Real had a revelation.

She knew exactly where she'd seen him before. She first laid eyes on him well over a decade earlier when she was 12 years old playing Linea Directa, the Spanish version of Dream Phone, a toy she had begged her mother for after seeing non-stop TV commercials.

The popular '90s electronic board game for teens and sleepover-aged pre-teens involved 'calling' boys on a hot pink plastic play phone to find out who your secret admirer was. Their pre-recorded messages would give clues, like in the game Guess Who?, prompting players to guess from a range of possible suitors, until a final voice would excitedly reveal: 'You're right! I really like you.'

Of course, it was not an actual phone, nor were the dial-a-date calls real, but the 24 models on the playing cards were indeed real people hired as the faces of the game.

Lyon was the standout heartthrob; Gorgeous George, whose image was emblazoned on the game packaging and was often featured in marketing as a firm fan favorite.

In fact, Del Real was one of those girls who crushed on him. She fondly remembered playing it 'non-stop,' mostly to increase her chances of hearing that George - or as he was called in Spain, Jesus - liked her.

'I would play and play and play it because I wanted to get him [as my secret admirer],' Del Real said. 'I liked him and I liked another one - there were two cute ones.'

But once it clicked for Del Real that Lyon was George, she kept her discovery secret.

Tickled to be messaging with the real-life dreamboat, she didn't want to scare him off. She was beginning to really fall for Lyon thanks to their deep conversations in those first few weeks.

The truth, Lyon told the Daily Mail, is that Del Real had nothing to worry about. He was already head-over-heels in love with her - even after she revealed that she had been 'super in love' with him during her Dream Phone playing days.

Lyon said: 'I found my soulmate through MySpace, but after listening to her talk about the Dream Phone situation, maybe if I had never been in Dream Phone, I wouldn't be sitting here. It's funny and kind of cool how it all came together.'

After a year of chatting online daily, it was apparent to them both that their connection was real and worth exploring. 

Del Real had just finished university and became a flight attendant, knowing she could rack up frequent flier miles to visit Lyon in Los Angeles. Before she had even finished training, Lyon visited her in Barcelona, a week of electric chemistry that made them want to take the next step.

Seven days in Barcelona turned into multiple weeks in Malaga, where Lyon met Del Real's family. 

Lyon knew that even after 11 years in California, his future was with Del Real in Spain, so Del Real visited him in Los Angeles and took a road trip to meet his family in New Hampshire. It was during that trip that she found out that she was pregnant with their first child, so Lyon sold his car and other belongings and made the move to be with her in Spain. In 2010, they got married.

Now, over 20 years after their first online meeting, the happy couple is more in love than ever, with 16 years of marriage under their belt, four children - aged 18, 17, 12 and four - and a houseful of pets.

'It felt like it was meant to happen,' Lyon, now 52 and working as a luxury real estate agent, said. 'We're very similar people with similar interests.'

'From the moment I knew it was him [as George], I thought I better marry him and have babies,' Del Real, now 43 and having recently returned to work as a flight attendant, said with a laugh.

Their extraordinary love story would have been a private, cherished memory for only the couple had it not been for, once again, social media. TikTok creator Hannah Young posted a video series about Dream Phone in the hopes of finding boys from the game and the post found its way to Del Real's feed. There, Del Real revealed she was married to 'George,' who, judging by the comments, is still a fan favorite.

Lyon only became 'Gorgeous George' by chance. He was 17 in high school in 1991 when his mother, an amateur photographer, said that he wouldn't have to get a summer job if he booked some modeling gigs. 

Lyon, intent on spending the summer surfing with his friends off the coast of New Hampshire, attended a casting call for the game. He got a call back and booked the shoot, which paid a mere $150 or $200 for a buyout for the entire shoot.

Lyon said: 'The whole thing was really funny because I got paid like nothing for that job, so when the game came out, I thought I didn't get paid enough - and that was way before I realized that it was a global game.'

Indeed, when the game debuted a few months after the shoot, it became a worldwide sensation. Though sales figures were never released by its maker, toy company Milton Bradley, it was a massive commercial success with international editions and, though long discontinued, it still resells online for hundreds of dollars today.

Lyon was shocked by the popular response. Strangers began approaching him, recognizing him from the board game. He had a seasonal job at the mall, where girls would come up to him asking him to sign autographs. He also remembers that for a period of time when he would attend school sporting events, girls would chant 'George' at him.

'It was a terrible photo and no disrespect to anybody named George, but I was not a huge fan of the name they gave me either,' he said.

'It was just a normal photo shoot, so that's why I didn't think anything of it at all. It was just a one-and-done, really. I had done other things that I was more known for, but obviously I was very, very wrong.'

Before becoming one of the faces of Dream Phone, he was featured in Seventeen magazine as the winner of the 'Best Boyfriend in America' contest, which, ironically enough, led to a Dream Phone-esque experience in real life.

Along with the glory, the magazine published his full name and hometown of Rye Beach. When his family returned home from a vacation, their answering machine was inundated with giddy girls who found his number in the phonebook.

'We went on holiday for a week and when we came back, the answering machine was totally full,' Lyon said. 'It was just girls giggling and girls saying call me back. I got all this mail, people sending me stuff they made for me and girls calling the house all the time. It was a funny thing.'

Despite being the object of girls' affections across America he admitted that it didn't necessarily translate to him being a ladies' man in real life.

Lyon said: 'I was really kind of shy at that age. To be completely honest, being a kid in high school, especially where I grew up, it gave me more trouble with the boyfriends of the girls that had the game and kind of gave me a lot of grief.

'But I kept my head up. I enjoyed everything that I did and not having to get a full-time summer job was great.'

To this day, Lyon's never played the game and is still a little confused as to how it works, despite Del Real's attempts to explain it.

However, Dream Phone was the call of a lifetime for them both.

'I hated the George photo. When I saw it, I was so bummed out, but luckily for me, Paloma didn't think I looked bad,' Lyon said. 'Maybe if I hadn't been on the game, I wouldn't be where I am today. She's my soulmate and we'll be together forever without a doubt.'