The fair place to meet is Oklahoma City, OK — the city closest to the midpoint of Columbus and El Paso. From the farther side that’s about 17 hr 50 min of driving.
Recommended midpoint
Oklahoma City, OK
From Columbus
17 hr 50 min
851 mi to Oklahoma City
From El Paso
12 hr 4 min
576 mi to Oklahoma City
El Paso has the shorter trip; the split is off by about 5 hr 46 min. The alternatives below can even it out. Columbus and El Paso are about 1,426 miles apart.
Columbus and El Paso are about 1,426 miles apart by road. Split the difference and you arrive near Oklahoma City, the city closest to the halfway point between them. That puts roughly 17 hr 50 min of driving on the Columbus side and 12 hr 4 min on the El Paso side — the fairest single meeting point among the cities near the middle.
Over this distance most people will fly rather than drive the whole way. Oklahoma City still makes a fair, central place for Columbus and El Paso to converge, splitting the travel instead of asking one side to cross the country.
If Oklahoma City doesn't have what you're after, Kansas City and Dallas are also close to the midpoint and worth a look — each keeps the drive reasonably balanced between Columbus and El Paso.
Oklahoma City, often shortened to OKC, is the capital and most populous city in the U.S. state of Oklahoma. It is the 21st-most populous U.S. city and 8th largest in the Southern United States, with a population of 681,054 at the 2020 census. Read more →
Columbus is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Ohio. With a population of 905,748 at the 2020 census, it is the 14th-most populous city in the U.S., second-most populous city in the Midwest, and third-most populous U.S. state capital. Read more →
El Paso is a city in and the county seat of El Paso County, Texas, United States. It is the 22nd-most populous city in the U.S., sixth-most populous city in Texas, and the most populous city in West Texas with a population of 678,815 at the 2020 census. Read more →
City descriptions adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA); photos via Wikimedia Commons, credited above.
Estimates use straight-line distance and typical road speeds; real drive times vary with route and traffic.