When I was in the 4th grade, my mom used to drag me to a lot of garage sales, and one of them had a box full of issues of the two magazines and some miscellaneous other roleplaying stuff, mostly FASA Star Trek stuff. I liked Star Trek, so we ended up getting the whole box, and for pretty darned cheap, too, if I remember correctly.
One of my school friends was over some time after this, and saw the magazines and assumed I played. At which point, he told me he and his brother and his parents played, and had to explain the whole thing to me - I hadn't really paid the magazines much attention, being more focused on the Star Trek books (which I thought were neat, but really hadn't figured out the game you were supposed to play with them yet - no "core" books). I ended up playing with them for a while until we moved away, but from that point, I was keeping an eye out for another game, running some for friends, and occasionally running some for my cousins when visiting my grandma's house.
I've never read an issue cover to cover, and I've never bought an issue new-off-the-shelf, but the magazines directly led to my playing D&D.