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Wednesday, Jul. 08, 2009
Still single? Looking for love? Why not try the country's oldest matchmaker
In the age of internet dating, an 86-year-old Dallas yenta fixes up couples the old school way.
By Joanna Cattanach
Have you or someone you know ever found love through a matchmaker or online dating site?
The night starts out fine. The restaurant’s in a good location. Your date arrives on time. He’s a couple of inches shorter than his profile said. No problem. You’ll just wear flats next time.
"Hi there," he says, arm outstretched to give you a breast-jiggling handshake.
OK, make this work, don’t judge him yet. He’s smart, you tell yourself. And you’ve had really good conversations online and over the phone. Except he’s got a nose hair that’s peeking out at you. It’s long and white. You can’t stop staring at it. Quick. Smile and order something to drink.
"A Cape Cod," you tell the waitress — liquid courage. "So, you told me you were in the medical profession. What exactly do you do?"
"Well," he replies, chewing on a cube of ice before spitting it back into his glass of Jack and Coke. "I work in medical sales for a group of physicians."
Intrigued, you inquire further.
"Really? What hospital?"
"Oh, it’s a cosmetic-surgery center. I do medical sales and handle product ordering and placement," he says. "You know, silicone and Botox for the ladies," he says with a laugh as his eyebrows wag up and down.
Congratulations! You’re on a date with a man who lies about his stature, doesn’t groom well and sells fake boobies for a living. Can dating really be this bad? Are you really that much of a loser that you can’t find even one decent person in the whole damn city? You screened this one. You Googled his ass! And now you’ve got to spend the next two hours trying not to stare at the nose hair you’ve secretly named Pepe.
"You know," he says, leaning toward you, "I can get you a great deal on that loose skin at your neck. Seriously, 15 percent off a neck lift."
Oh no he didn’t.
Have faith, dating darlings — Zella’s on the Case.
Matchmaker, matchmaker
At 86, Zella Case is believed to be the country’s oldest matchmaker. She has been getting paid to play Cupid for 41 years. And before you go poo-pooing the idea of a Dallas great-grandmother handling your love life, consider her success rate: She has matched 500 couples and counts only 19 divorces.
So if you don’t think you need a modern-day Yenta on your side, think again. (Or just keep dating the Silicone Salesman.)
Case, who doesn’t look a day over 66, says that butting into other people’s love lives (with their permission, of course) has kept her young. Her keen sense of who fits together and who doesn’t comes from years of interviewing people — she majored in psychology at Texas Christian University — and an innate intuition.
"I really think that I was born with it," she says. "I want everybody else to be happy like I am (she has been married 66 years to Roger and has three children). I love people. I’m fascinated by people and their lives."
And people are fascinated by her, especially in the age of Internet hookups and speed dating. "I have to be careful when we go out," Case says. "If I tell someone I’m a matchmaker, the whole evening is spent answering questions."
But don’t go thinking Granny doesn’t know about what’s out there these days. Sexting, hooking up, one-night stands, etc. etc. She has gotten used to clients, especially women, who are more experienced than they were, or admitted they were, 15 years ago.
"As long as it hasn’t been just a lot of casual sex," says Case, and "as long as you have cared about the person," on some level you’re the kind of client she can work with.
She admits to being old-fashioned, but the eyes that peer at you from behind huge tortoise-frame glasses aren’t judgmental. They’re curious. And her honeysuckle accent and "OK, darlin’ " disarm even the most skeptical of clients. At first, it may feel odd and even embarrassing to sit on a grandmother’s couch confessing your lack of a love life, but the blond-haired lady from Durant, Okla., needs all of 10 minutes to get you chatting like a magpie. Next thing you know, you’ve just told her that, yes, you are a bit shy and secretly love "Star Trek" movies, and, as a matter of fact, do prefer blondes over redheads.
"It used to be losers who got a matchmaker," says Case, but now people are more accepting. Think about it. You have accountants, real estate agents, stylists. Why not your own matchmaker?
"I don’t really care too much for online dating," says one of Case’s clients, a 32-year-old woman I’ll call Dating in Dallas. "I tried another matchmaker. Three months and a lot of money later, they still hadn’t set me up with anybody. Period."
All’s fair in love-connecting
Case says she got into matchmaking by accident. While working at an employment agency in Fort Worth, she responded to an ad in the newspaper for assistance at the struggling dating service Someone Special, Inc. She wanted to send prospective employees their way. They hired her instead. And Case took to the job like a natural.
Even in the late 1960s, North Texas women had a hard time finding a decent date. Her daughter, Judy, 24, was one of them. After a particularly awful trip to a church singles group, she told her mother, " 'Ugh! They were 18, 19 or 20 and paying child support. I want somebody that hasn’t been used,’ " Case repeated.
Technology, style and fashion may have changed since that time, but dating problems haven’t. Women still sit on her couch and complain that all the good men are "either married or gay." And, no, she’s not strict about only taking heterosexuals. She has had one gay client and a transvestite who applied at Someone Special, Inc. But she admits that gay clients typically don’t apply with her. "I think there should be civil unions," she said. "It just wouldn’t be called marriage."
While some matchmaker services can cost thousands of dollars, Case charges a flat fee: $500 for a year.
And if she doesn’t think she can help you, she doesn’t take your money. Period.
"I don’t take overweight girls because the guys don’t want them," and no smokers or men without a good job and education. No, it’s not prejudices, Case says. It’s business. When clients meet with her, they let a polite wall fall and tell her what they really do and do not want in a partner. Honesty is the key to helping match people up, she says.
"Most people that come to me are looking for a relationship or marriage," says Case, during an interview at her home office, where a computer shares one corner of the town home with an index box filled with her clients’ info. Handwritten notes and pictures lie on the table next to her recliner.
Case’s clients, area men and women, have ranged in age from 21 to 83. There are "more older women and fewer younger men" these days, she says. And most tell her the same story. "They don’t want to go to the bars anymore. They’re selective and busy."
Case meets with each of her clients and has them undergo handwriting analysis and complete a personality profile with questions like, "Is X-rated entertainment a bad influence on most people?" And she asks her own questions, like, "Where are you in your birth order?" It matters if you were the oldest or a middle child. What do you like? What are your hobbies? How religious are you? And those with a strict list of what they do and don’t want often have more flexibility than they realize.
While Case is decidedly old-school, she has adapted to changes in the dating trade. She carries a cellphone and has her own Web site, MatchmakingbyZella.com. And she’s down with the e-mail thing.
But time cannot change the reason people come to a matchmaker, Case says. They’re looking for that perfect match. As your dating advocate, Zella is as vested in your happiness as your own granny would be. And she is as turned off by Silicone Salesman as you are. She wants dating to be a step to true love, not a battlefield of wackos and freak shows whose calls you have to screen for weeks.
But Zella has something your grandmother doesn’t: 40 years of matchmaking under her belt, and a reputation to uphold. "It just takes one person," Case says, "if it’s the right person."
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