May 30, 2007
Ellen St. Denis
Helping others find their perfect match
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by PATRICIA GAY
Ellen St. Denis has ridden the carousel of dating. She’s kissed her fair share of frogs and found out the hard way that a lot of single, older men carry baggage — and not the carry-on variety either.
But still, she hoped that one day she would meet a prince of a man.
It wouldn’t be easy, though. As a 54-year-old, divorced working mother, living in an affluent family-based community like Weston, it was difficult to meet eligible mature men.
She said after her divorce five years ago, she did what many newly single women do and tried the bar scene. “I dressed too young and drank too much. It wasn’t for me,” she said.
Then she decided to give Internet dating a try. So she filled out a questionnaire and posted her profile on match.com, a popular Web site that calls itself “the leader of online dating.”
“I was now ready to go forth and meet a fabulous man,” Ms. St. Denis said.
Date offers started pouring in, but Ms. St. Denis noticed that a good number of her potential suitors were less than truthful about themselves in their profiles. “They looked nothing like their pictures and weren’t completely honest. People weren’t what they seemed to be,” she said.
Although she did have a good date here and there, the only real match she got from match.com was a relationship that developed between one of her dates and her dog, a black Lab named Charlie.
“One of the guys really liked my dog, and was very good to him. When I needed to find a new home for Charlie, I gave him my dog. So, match.com was good for one match,” she said.
In time, she learned to separate the wheat from the chaff in the dating cybersphere and even learned how to figure out when men were lying before going through the process of meeting them.
But still, the whole online dating process took its toll.
“I was a very busy person. I had to work and then come home to my kids. I gave up on Internet dating because I was frustrated too many times,” she said.
She said married people don’t realize how physically exhausting the dating process is when juggling it with career and family. “You have to make sure you look good for the date — your make-up has to be just right, you need to wear dresses and heels all the time. You can’t wear sweat pants and flip-flops,” she said.
Great Date Now
Then one day, when she was at the Westport train station, an advertisement caught her eye. It was for a dating service called “Great Date Now” that billed itself as a matchmaking service for upscale attractive singles.
Instead of using the most modern technology available, Great Date Now was decidedly old fashioned. Each client is given the one-on-one personalized services of a professional matchmaker.
It is one of the few dating services that conducts background checks on all its clients to verify identity, said Gary Ferone, the company’s president.
Ever the optimist, Ms. St. Denis decided to give it a whirl and signed up. The cost was $2,495 for 10 introductions. A bit steep, perhaps, but to Ms. St. Denis the cost was worth it to have someone else conducting background checks.
Ms. St. Denis met the matchmaker at an office in Darien. “She spent an hour and a half with me and asked many questions about my interests, hobbies, and the ideal person I was looking for. At the end of our discussion, I felt she had a good sense of me,” she said.
She soon got a call from the service about a potential date. The matchmaker helped choose a restaurant for the two to meet.
But for Ms. St. Denis, there was no chemistry. “At the end of the day, it’s all about pheromones and just two people talking. There was no connection between the two of us,” Ms. St. Denis said.
The matchmaker made it easy for Ms. St. Denis to stop seeing him. “They took care of everything, I never had to talk to him again,” she said.
After a few more dates, the matchmaker told Ms. St. Denis about a man she described as “Joe, a fireman from White Plains.”
The man was the same age as Ms. St. Denis and also had two children. “I thought why not, and agreed to go out with him,” she said.
It turned out to be a date she would never forget.
“I was meeting him at a restaurant in Stamford and I was 20 minutes late. It was raining really hard and my hair looked like a topiary. I couldn’t find a parking spot, and was drenching wet when I walked into the restaurant. There at the bar was this extremely nice looking man. He took my dripping coat and calmed me down. We started laughing and talking. Four hours later, we left the restaurant and listened to music in the car,” she said.
It’s been nine months since then and the two are still dating. “I froze my membership with Great Date Now because I want to date Joe exclusively,” Ms. St. Denis said.
If, in the future, she decides to resume dating others, she can use the introductions still left in her membership at no extra charge. But right now that is not on her mind.
“I’m very happy with Joe. We had a body, mind, and spiritual connection,” Ms. St. Denis said.
It turned out that Joe had once been a fireman but after falling through a roof, became an attorney. “I never would have met Joe without Great Date Now. And I definitely wouldn’t have met him through match.com because he doesn’t even own a computer!” she said.
Another match
A few months later, Ms. St. Denis got a call from her matchmaker who said she was leaving Great Date Now, and asked Ms. St. Denis if she would be interested in her position.
Being a people person, Ms. St. Denis thought it sounded like a good idea and went through a series of interviews with the company. “My nickname is 1-800-Ellie, because people call me all the time for advice and suggestions, so this seemed like the right kind of job for me,” she said.
When the lengthy interview process was over, she was hired. Her business cards now read, “Ellen St. Denis, Matchmaker.”
Now she’s the one who helps other single people find their perfect matches — and she’s loving it.
“It is so difficult, especially for women, to find good people to date, and I really like making that happen for them. I know what bad marriages are like, and juggling work and a family,” Ms. St. Denis said.
As much as Ms. St. Denis loves her new job, her daughters, both students at Weston High School, cringe with embarrassment about their mother’s new profession; they see matchmakers as something quaint like Dolly Levi in Hello Dolly or the yenta in Fiddler on the Roof.
“It’s weird for them, I guess. You don’t grow up thinking you want to be a matchmaker, but this is something I feel very suited for,” Ms. St. Denis said.
In addition to her personal experience, she also has a diverse professional background. She was the educational program director for the Boston Ballet and was involved in ad sales for Brooks newspapers. She went to Washington University in St. Louis, and has a degree in education from NYU.
These days, she is working out of Great Date Now’s Milford and Darien offices. The company serves the tri-state area with offices in Manhattan and New Jersey as well as Connecticut.
According to Mr. Ferone, the company’s president, Great Date Now has 3,000 customers. He said more than 100 couples have married. Because the company conducts background checks, about 35% of potential customers are turned away.
He said clients range in age from 28 to 85, with most between 30 and 55. His average male client is a successful businessman who catches a 6:30 a.m. train and doesn’t have time to look for a mate.
“People pay for landscapers to help with their yards and housekeepers to help with their homes, so we offer a service to help a person find a good relationship,” Mr. Ferone said.
Ms. St. Denis is enjoying the challenge of her new position and finding the right match for her clients. She is even helping with a personalized search to find a mate for a blind gentleman.
She has a lot of compassion for those who haven’t dated in a long time. “It’s a different era from when they got married, so we can refer them to dating coaches that can help them with wardrobe or make-up,” she said.
“The bar phase was like the infancy of dating, match.com was like adolescence, and Great Date Now is like adulthood,” Ms. St. Denis said in a fashion that would make Dolly Levi proud.
For more information on Ms. Denis’ matchmaking services, visit www.greatdatenow.com.
© Copyright 2008 by Hersam Acorn Newspapers
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