Hilary DeCesar had a great deal of professional success, first as a sales executive in Silicon Valley and then through her life transformation and business as an executive coach. But when it came to finding love after her divorce, DeCesar spent years trying dating apps, sites and other avenues without satisfaction.
That’s when she realized she needed the same kind of help she would get when trying to accomplish something in any other field outside her expertise.
“I have a pickleball tournament coming up in three weeks, so what do I do? I decide to set up lessons with a pickleball coach,” said DeCesare, 55, who now owns a pickleball shop. Re-release It’s a Colorado company. “Don’t try to do it yourself. Choose the best company.”
Enter the matchmaker.
Through a mutual friend, DeCesar met Shannon Lundgren, a San Francisco resident with a Harvard MBA who had recently launched a professional matchmaking service. Shannon’s CircleOn their third date, set up by Lundgren, DeCesare met her future husband and has been married for nearly 11 years.
“Why do it on your own when you can accelerate your success and get there faster?” DeCesare says. “That’s what this is about: Start living and start living faster.”
Matchmaking is big business
Although it accounts for less than a quarter of the dating industry, which is estimated to be worth $4 billion in 2024 in the U.S. alone, matchmaking is much more than just dating coaching. But actual one-on-one matchmaking has made a notable comeback in the past two decades. Long relegated to the shadows of dating sites and apps, the centuries-old practice has reemerged as a preferred option by people who can afford to pay for it and are willing to embrace the human dynamic of a third-party search for love.
“People are becoming increasingly comfortable outsourcing their love lives in the same way they hire a personal trainer at the gym or a private chef to cook their meals,” says Rachel Greenwald, a US-based matchmaker and executive fellow at Harvard Business School. Elite Service They range from $10,000 to $75,000 per month and require a minimum three-month contract term.
Of course, not everyone can afford a personal trainer or a private chef, but even at a low level, personal matchmaking just isn’t the same as algorithmic dating, and the price tag (in most cases, thousands of dollars or more) reflects that.
As I learned when interviewing several professional matchmakers about the industry’s growth, exact figures are hard to come by, especially since the work does not require licensing and is largely unregulated. “It’s essentially the Wild West,” Greenwald says, “with a lot of family-owned businesses.”
Still, business is booming, according to insiders: At the start of the 20th century, there were around 50 one-on-one matchmaking services in the U.S.; today there are more than 5,000, says New York matchmaker Lisa Crumpett. In the U.S. alone, the industry is growing 100 percent,” she says.
Matchmakers say many clients are tired of online and app dating or have decided the time investment isn’t paying off, while some services say helicopter parents, who try to match their adult children or advise them on dating skills, can make up more than a third of their clients. (Matchmakers say parents can pay a fee but have no involvement in the process.)
Clampett, a former social worker, jumped into the business. In 2000, a museum named after her was established. Marriage agency, She targeted New York’s wealthy elite. A few years later, she founded the Matchmaking Institute (now Global Love InstituteThe Matchmaking and Coaching Certification Association offers ethical guidelines and serves as an industry group where matchmakers can share resources and best practices. Global Love Conference The rally, held in New York, was billed as the largest of its kind ever.
Modern matchmaking doesn’t have much in common with its “auntie introduces you to people she can introduce you to” predecessors. Matchmakers say their clients are typically looking for serious relationships, but marriage isn’t necessarily or usually the goal, which requires a thorough screening and interview process up front. Someone who’s recently divorced, for example, might just want to meet different people and regain their confidence, Greenwald says.
While most services accept clients from all backgrounds, some operate in very specific niches, such as religion, geography, or sexual preference. Michal Nystetler She runs a service in Philadelphia that focuses on Jewish dating. “It’s an interesting place as a microcosm of dating,” she says. “It’s a diverse city, it’s the birthplace of America, but it’s also very much a ‘hometown’ city. People live here a long time, they buy homes, they’re loyal to their teams. I can’t tell you how many people I’ve met that I thought I already knew but actually didn’t.”
Matchmakers, with estimated prices ranging from about $10,000 to more than $300,000, often act as relationship concierge services, helping people avoid the time-waster of searching online and app profiles for a date. Greenwald says she sometimes vets and interviews 10 to 20 people to compile a set of profiles to present to her clients, a process she calls “curation.”
Elite matchmakers and their VIP clients
With elite level matchmakers luck Spoke said he always keeps his client list very short, sometimes six people or less, so he can focus on the needs of VIPs and respond quickly. (At the lower end of the cost range, clients can expect a more agency-like approach, meaning less expensive but less personal.)
“When we do a national search, we can only take on a few clients at a time.” Based in Iowa However, we have the ability to scour the US to find what is best for our clients.
Cantrill spent years coaching women on how to navigate the online and other dating worlds before switching to matchmaking in 2020. She still does both, which seems to be common in the industry. Some matchmaking agencies said they also advise their clients on things like how to dress, personal branding and setting up their online profiles.
Despite the lack of licenses or mandatory certifications, modern matchmaking is clearly a business, and top earners can earn seven figures. But to get there, they must keep an eye on profits while also searching for the best matches and successful experiences for their clients.
Rachel Greenwald, for example, works only with men, in part because that’s what the math tells her to do, as do many other matchmakers.
“The average matchmaking client is over 40 because the fees are too high for younger people to pay,” Greenwald says. “Once you get to that age, there are a lot more great single women out there, but fewer great men. And a lot of those men want to have kids, so they want to date women 10 years younger. So it’s a tight market for women.”
Greenwald said brokers sometimes have to weigh the opportunity cost of introducing a client to a potential match at the expense of another client who is perhaps more qualified. She said successful brokers think like lawyers when it comes to desired hourly rate and expected workload.
They also have to be ruthless, with their own empathy: Greenwald says a good matchmaker is someone who listens carefully and ultimately turns down more than 50 percent of potential clients because they simply don’t think they can help them find love or move forward in life.
“We’re not magicians. It’s really important that people know about this business. We’re not like we just hand someone a menu and have them order,” he said. A la carte, Whatever they want.”
On the other hand, when it works, it’s wonderful. Most matchmakers agree that “success” is in the client’s eyes, whether that be a mutually satisfying relationship, marriage, or simply a process of self-discovery. But they say they never get tired of watching people hit it off and fall in love.
“People start to have success and they’re at the top of the mountain by themselves, and I’m really fascinated by that dilemma,” says Mr. Clampett, of New York. “I’m really helping people transition into a different skill set that’s totally different from business success.”
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