Finding Love Through A Professional Matchmaker

Here's how it's done.

By
Published September 11, 2026
Colorful illustration of older adults participating in a matchmaking experience. One person reviews dating profiles in a binder while another profile figure appears holding flowers
Tara Jacoby

When I heard that Bumble, an online dating app that famously allowed women to make the first move, was phasing out its signature “swipe right to match, left to keep looking” model, I thought, “Yeah, that sounds about right.” As someone who has been on and off (mostly off) online dating apps for years, I got the sense that everyone on them was as miserable with the algorithm as I was. But I was intrigued by the proposed upgrade: an AI matchmaker.

AI has been blamed for making many jobs obsolete, but did human matchmakers still exist, I wondered? Turns out, they’re a lot more common than I realized. A Google search turned up four within 15 miles of me, including one husband-and-wife team.

Matchmaking seemed like such a quaint, old-fashioned take on dating, and that’s exactly what made it appealing, especially after being subject to the tech industry’s stranglehold on modern-day romance for so long. So I reached out. Not just to one — to all of them — including one matchmaking company that works in major metropolitan areas across the country. I ended up with roughly a dozen matches in a month, and no, I didn’t find true love. But here’s what I learned:

THE PRICE OF LOVE

To answer the question I know is on everyone’s mind, the cost of a human matchmaker varies. A lot. I was quoted prices from $300 for three months to $60,000 for six. And yes, I was astounded that anyone would pay the equivalent of a luxury car just for the opportunity to meet another person. But I also understand it. “Apps are free, but you pay in time and sanity,” says Erika Kaplan, VP of membership for Three Day Rule, a dating service that operates in 15 major U.S. cities.

In general, my understanding is that the higher the cost, the more personalized the service. Companies like Three Day Rule may have larger databases of potential matches, but so-called boutique matchmakers (usually one-person operations) spend a lot more time getting to know you and finding the right fit.

It’s important to choose a matchmaker you connect with on a personal level. “If you don’t have a connection with your matchmaker, it’s really hard for them to make a connection for you,” says Brigitte Weil, who has been a matchmaker for more than 25 years. Weil stresses the importance of credentials. She is certified by both the Global Love Institute and the Matchmakers Alliance, and she almost always has a waiting list because she won’t take on more than five clients at a time, given how involved her search process is.

Weil spends a solid month getting to know a new client, and if no one in her own database is a fit, she collaborates with a network of other matchmakers. (Many matchmakers have a niche, like Jewish clients or those over age 50.) Weil has hired what she calls recruiters, and in one case, an anthropologist, to facilitate matches.

Recruiters are exactly what they sound like. All matchmaking services keep some kind of database, and most will offer to include you in it free of charge. That way, if you happen to be the perfect match for a paying customer, you’ll get a call. I thought this was probably very rare, as the profiles can be bare-bones, but to my surprise, I ended up hearing from Three Day Rule about a potential match in my area.

To keep their database full, matchmakers have to actively recruit new people. This may be the part of the process I found most intriguing, because I have never met nor even heard of anyone being approached by a stranger at the train station or in the grocery store for this purpose. Just how attractive, I wonder, do you have to be to get recruited?

CHEMISTRY 101

Here’s the process once you enlist a matchmaker: Fill out a profile with the basics (age, occupation, etc.), then talk with the matchmaker to drill down into the specifics. Mine asked me about my interests, past relationships and what I wanted now. This, of course, assumes most people actually know what a good match for them will be. I asked the pros if that’s the case, and was greatly reassured that yes, it usually is. On occasion, opposites attract, but most people look for similar values and an alignment of goals. “Sometimes, in the dating process, you become more sure about what it ultimately is that you want,” says Weil. “That's probably one of the most valuable parts of matchmaking.”

What helps is knowing you’ll have to give your matchmaker feedback after the date — and your date will be doing the same. “Usually, a lack of chemistry is why the match fails,” says Jill Elliot, owner of Sweet Beginnings matching service. But thinking about how to tell your matchmaker why the match failed makes you think a little harder. In fact, just using a matchmaker at all raises the stakes of dating a bit. If you've invested money in this, you’re under a fair bit of pressure to make at least one of these dates work out, right?

I, of course, was worried about coming up completely matchless. This is unlikely. “We promise at least one very curated vetted match per month,” says Kaplan. And the company will not take on a client it cannot guarantee good matches for.

Most matchmakers, when they have someone in mind for you, provide a photo and brief bio, but some, including the service I used, do not. “I don’t believe in photos,” says Elliot. “I personally take a bad photo. I give a description and try to honor any physical preferences.” I know a lot of people will find that terrifying, but to me, the idea of a truly blind date was kind of fun and adventurous. If nothing else, it was the opposite of app world, where everything is looks-based.

One similarity across every service I spoke with was that, for heterosexual couples, the man should make the first move. “Most ladies prefer if the man initiates contact with them first,” says Elliot. Her advice was to keep the initial phone call short and sweet, just small talk and plans to meet for coffee or something casual. Some of my matches honored this, and others spent so long on the phone with me I wondered what we’d talk about when we actually met. So I agree with Elliot on these logistics. And I found that you can tell a lot about a person just from that initial contact.

LOVE IS BLIND

As a reporter for 20-plus years, I have no qualms about meeting and talking to strangers. And as a dating veteran, I had a good idea of what — and who — I wanted. I’m a big foodie, so I could often tell just by the meeting place whether a match had potential. Independent coffee chains or cute cocktail bars were a green flag. Dunkin’ and the Starbucks inside a Barnes & Noble? Not so much.

It wasn’t hard to figure out who my dates were, although I often questioned what my matchmaker could possibly have thought we might have had in common. My first match was a very pleasant widower who had lost his high school sweetheart of 20 years. He was a super nice guy, but we had no shared interests. He liked to snowboard. I hate the cold. He rode motorcycles. I prefer my road bike. We had a nice conversation and then exchanged mutual “best of luck finding your person” texts.

Other matches were wilder. Two different men I was set up with dropped racial epithets casually into the conversation. One of them also had BO. I started to question whether this really was better than online dating. I tried to keep my feedback gentle and constructive, along the lines of, “maybe someone with a four-year degree like me?” and “I really enjoy spending time outdoors, if you know anyone similar.”

Usually, the more open-minded you are, the easier it is to find matches. But I came to the conclusion that I was looking for quality over quantity. When I started my matchmaker journey, I jokingly played the scene from Mulan over in my head. But along the way I realized that, like Mulan, I was probably cut out for something other than marriage. I might not save China, but for now at least I’m going to put my energy into other pursuits, and let love come to me in its own good time, leaving the rest to fate.

But hey, if you happen to know anyone…

Would YOU ever use a matchmaker? Let us know in the comments below.

Jill Waldbieser is a journalist who writes about health, wellness, science, food, and parenting. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Huffington Post, and Everyday Health, among other places. She lives in Bucks County, Pennsylvania and looks forward to becoming a crazy cat lady.