John Popper of Blues Traveler met "Howard's Secret Girlfriend", Beth, at the Letterman Show in 1998

In John Popper's autobography, he wrote about his meeting with Beth in 1998:

I met his wife, Beth Ostrosky, before people knew they were dating. We were doing Letterman, they hired her to be a chorus girl, and she told me, "I want you to know I'm secretly Howard's girlfriend, but we're not supposed to tell anybody."​

http://i.imgur.com/HjbJe1l.jpg

He doesn't say the date, but he was on the Letterman show in August of 1998 and the next time he was on was May of 2001 after Beth was known publicly as Howard's girlfriend (it was public since April of 2001).

Here is Letterman's episode guide:

http://epguides.com/LateShowwithDavidLetterman/

The official story how they met always had tons of holes from it changing to Beth not selling the lie anymore and stating many times that they started to date in 1998. I understand that he didn't want people to know he was dating at the time since he was not officially separated from Alison, but I still don't why he had to have sham relationships with Robin Givens and Angie Everheart and still lie about when they met to hide this fact.