Have been playing board games for many years. Then Heroscape as my first real mini wargame, but it got cancelled last Fall, after I collected about 1200 minis:( Then got some D&D and
AT-43 and Confrontation minis, because they look cool
Have been playing the
DOW video games for years and startet reading the
BL novels last year. Bought and painted (pix in my gallery) minis in May to see how much I like it. Too much, I fear; I have about 60 chaos space marine models to paint now

All without having been in a
GW store. Went there only afterwards while visiting family in Germany, the closest on in the US is 3 flight hours away from where I live.
And it was just recently that I made the connection between Warhammer and the shape of the helmet of the chaos sorcerer in Heroquest that a friend had a decade back.