1)Mobile Suit Gundam Wing
2)My cousins were huge fans, and they told me about it.
3)No, I didn't see the whole thing till I got the box set a few years later, for christmas, and didn't see it all until me and a friend marathoned it to celebrate the end of our first year of high school. What followed was a hailstorm of anime, if my memory continues to serve it was, in order, Kannazuki No Miko (this series was the powder, Wing was the spark, the others are the keg), Black Cat, Lucky Star, Mobile Suit Gundam 0083: Stardust Memory, Shattered Angels, The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, Various Hayao Miyazaki works, also Akira, Super Dimension Fortress Macross\Robotech, and most recently Chrono Crusade. Gundam Wing started all of that.