I just re-read my post on this topic and realized that I have a severe lack of elaboration on that post
So what actually got me into Kanon was an anime forum that I used to go to very frequently at the time. Someone made a topic about Kanon and people were all praises about it. Watched it and loved it. I did realize what “Key” was and heard about the praise of Clannad as well. But at the time, because I was so impressed with both Kanon and Fate/Stay Night, I learned what a “Visual Novel” was. So I told myself “I will not watch Clannad until I read the VN first!” which, as expected, had no english translation patch yet 
But yeah, I only played my first VN after I asked my friend about it and he let me know about planetarian. I don’t know why I was still lazy to find out about more Key VNs back then, but eh. I guess after that I did tell my girlfriend about Key and how they make really good stories, and how clannad is their best-known work (and has no ero content), so I guess that’s what caused her to look for it.
The rest is pretty much accurate as it was a slippery slope down to reading all the rest of their works
