May, 1935 Dr. Bob and Bill meet in Akron for the first time.
The following comes from the book A.A. Comes of Age, pages 67-68
This was the man who was to be my partner and founder of Akron's Group Number One. With the remarkable Sister Ignatia, he was to care for 5,000 cases of alcoholism in the time when A.A. was still very young. This was the wonderful friend with whom I was never to have a hard word. This was Dr. Bob, A.A.'s co-founder-to-be.
But at five o'clock that Sunday afternoon Bob did not look much like a founder. He was shaking badly. Uneasily he told us that he could stay only about fifteen minutes. Though embarrassed, he brightened a little when I said I thought he needed a drink. After dinner, which he did not eat, Henrietta discreetly put us off in her little library. There Bob and I talked until eleven o'clock.
Just before leaving for Akron, Dr. Silkworth had given me a great piece of advice. Without it, A.A. might never have been born. "Look, Bill," he had said, "you're having nothing but failure because you are preaching at these alcoholics. You are talking to them about the Oxford Group precepts of being absolutely honest, absolutely pure, absolutely unselfish, and absolutely loving. This is a very big order. Then you top it off by harping on this mysterious spiritual experience of yours. No wonder they point their finger to their heads and go out and get drunk. Why don't you turn your strategy the other way around?
Bill, you've got the cart before the horse. You've got to deflate these people first. So give them the medical business, and give it to them hard. Pour it right into them about the obsession that condemns them to drink and the physical sensitivity or allergy of the body that condemns them to go mad or die if they keep on drinking. Coming from another alcoholic, one alcoholic talking to another, maybe that will crack those tough egos deep down. Only then can you begin to try out your other medicine, the ethical principles you have picked up from the Oxford Groups."
Now-talking with Dr. Bob, I remembered all that Dr. Silkworth had said. So I went very slowly on the fireworks of religious experience. I just talked away about my own case until he got a good identification with me, until he began to say, "Yes, that's me, I'm like that."
Reprinted with permission from A.A. World Services, Inc.

Dr. Bob finally sobered up in June of that same year.