I learnt to play HoldEm with my family. We've always been big card games players - Canasta, Whist, Brag, Newmarket, Pontoon, Bridge, etc. Lots of card games... my parents still play bridge occasionally, but we don't play Brag any more - with the renaissance for Poker, we tried it out, and found it infinitely superior (although the big pots that could build up in Brag could be interesting).
Once we got a poker chip set, there was no turning back. A little later I decided to get into the poker chip set retail business, and also started playing
poker online around the same time. Initially I started out just playing for play money, but quickly got annoyed by how incompetent most of the play money players were (any hand, raise! And again! I just never got how that was fun), so I started on the
real money tables fairly soon after. I picked up Super System and Play Poker Like The Pros, and read them cover to cover, and still nearly bust out...
So... those first couple of times on tilt will hurt you, big time... but I learnt from the mistakes when it was time to switch tables, and somewhere along the way I ran into Steve Badgers pages on Omaha strategy, and decided to try Omaha and Omaha Hi/Lo instead... now I play Omaha Hi/Lo most of the time, and I'm doing a lot better on the cash stakes...