I was aware of Taylor guitars back in the early 90's, but it took quite a while before I bought one. My father grew up in the hills of Virginia, where bluegrass was born. So Martin dreadnoughts were "it" as far as high-end guitars, followed very distantly by Gibson J-45. After college and now with some income, I went down the Martin road too. First it was a mid-80's Sigma DR-28 clone that was really quite nice. When it was clear that the guitar thing was not a passing phase, that was followed by a real D-28, then a custom shop J-40 intended to be a "lifetime" guitar.
I kept reading Wood & Steel when I found copies in stores (they were newsprint in those days) and was duly impressed by the innovation and especially the NT neck system. And the great setups / playability. In 2001, I was visiting a shop in Fairbanks, AK during a business trip and played what ended up being my ovangkol 414ce. It stood out above all the other acoustic guitars in the store that day, including higher numbered Taylor's, and I bought it. That 414 was my primary gigging guitar for a long time.
Fast forward a few more years and the Martin's started bothering my fretting hand -- something still undefined about the Modified Low Oval neck carve along with the 1-11/16" nut width. I can play Taylor (or several other brands) for hours at a time, but more than 20 minutes on the typical modern Martin neck leaves my left hand aching for hours. So all the Martin's were sold off, to be replaced with a variety of Taylor's -- nine at one point. And now I've gotten into low maintenance carbon fiber guitars as we look toward retirement and travel, and most of the wooden guitars are slowly going away in an effort to simplify.