Meet the Arizonan Whose Online Dating Life Is Featured on Virtually in Love

If long distance is the wrong distance, what would you call an online relationship, one where the couple has never met? Guess we’ll find out with Oxygen Media’s new series Virtually in Love, a look at a collection of couples traveling the world to finally meet after a month to a couple years.

For Valley dwellers, the series hits close to home. Both the première and third episode of Virtually in Love are based right here in Phoenix. Dre Davis is visiting from Hamilton, Alabama, and meeting Arizona native Charli Carr in her hometown of Litchfield Park.

Of course, dramatics ensue, but the series’ main objective is to answer the big questions about Internet dating: Could you move to another part of the country or world to begin an in-person relationship? As in, is Phoenix about to gain a new resident?

“In the series première, Davis and Carr have been dating for six months but have never met in person," press materials explain. "When Carr visits Davis in Alabama, she learns he’s been hiding a secret about his ex-girlfriend, but little does Davis know Carr has been hiding a secret of her own.”

A little background on our girl Carr: She grew up in the West Valley, graduated from Millennium High School in 2007, got a basketball scholarship to Phoenix College, and played for a year at Millsaps College in Jackson, Mississippi, before getting injured. She eventually earned a bachelor’s degree in family and human development at Arizona State University. During filming, she was a single mother to her (now) 4-year-old daughter, Charlotte, and working as an administrative assistant at the Palo Verde Nuclear Power Plant.

West Valley residents and frequenters may recognize a few familiar spots on the show.

“While we were in Arizona, I showed Davis all around Litchfield Park where I grew up,” she says in an e-mail, “I was able to show him my elementary school, my childhood house, and the first basketball court I ever played on. We went to dinner at my favorite restaurant, Old Pueblo, in downtown Litchfield. They have the best Mexican food and usually have a live band. It is definitely the ‘go-to’ spot if you are in the West Valley.”

Davis also had a slight misconception about the Valley, hailing from a small town in northwestern Alabama. “Before coming to Phoenix, Davis had this idea that Arizona literally looked like a desert,” Carr says. “It was nice to be able to show him that there are actually trees and grass and not just dirt out here.”

Do they make it? You’ll have to watch and see.

Virtually in Love premières on Tuesday, May 24, at 9, 8 p.m. central.