Heh, this has just recently happened to me too...I'm very good friends with a girl I met in the middle of last year, pretty much liked her straight off the bat and told her about it quite early on - kept quiet about it for the most part after that save for a handful of incidents (some of which were powered by alcohol)...anyway a few weeks ago we end up having a conversation effectively along the lines of her saying she feels the same way about me. It's a grand feeling, I agree with the OP, definitely worth it!
All I can say is that depending on the girl, the friend zone barriers aren't immutable. Quite the discovery for me.
