I think the first place I saw anything about CoH was on G4TV.com(the TV show version of it), with a brief spotlight on it which included one of te hosts joking that he was the one who motion captured the "monkey dance" emote(/em dance6, I believe...)...
It trigued me and my brother enough that when it launched my brother bought it, and eventually I got my own account so we could play together, then subsequently I took over his account when he stopped playing.
It's a shame the station went down its self destructive path of "boobs and cars TV" and derailed itself into oblivion, because I use to watch it all the time before then. You know, when the G in G4 actually stood for Games and not God-aweful...