Chicago Make Me a Perfect Match

By David Brand

The other morning a very anxious woman called an office in downtown Chicago with a request that any mother could understand. "I want to get him out of the house," she said. "He's a nice boy. A doctor. But he's 38, for goodness' sake." The answer, of course, is to find that nice doctor a bride. And that is exactly what Heather Stern is in business to do: she is a matchmaker, '80s style.

Admittedly, this mother's request was unusual. But Stern's seven-year-old Chicago company, Personal Profiles, takes most problems to its bosom in its quest to find a spouse for each of its 1,650 clients, ranging from architects and artists to lawyers and engineers. This is not your matchmaker of old, Yente of Fiddler on the Roof or the garrulous busybody of Crossing Delancey, the sort of woman who knows her potential lovebirds like a good breeder knows horseflesh. Stern, who is a svelte 39, says her matchmaking is far more sophisticated and scientific; more, she says, like the methods used by an executive search firm. As evidence, she boasts of more than 100 marriages and & no divorces. Hopeful brides and bridegrooms are probed for their creditworthiness, their job history and their marital status. Appearance and habits are carefully noted: Does he bite his nails? Does she have bad teeth? They are prodded for their likes and dislikes: Does he like reggae? Does she like Rostropovich? "I try to introduce two people who are so similar to each other that when the going gets rough, they can fall back on their similarities. If a client likes to sail, he's a poor match for a woman who gets seasick. "

Such is vanity that Stern's clients sometimes have unrealistic visions of the sort of person they could reasonably expect to attract as a mate. "We had this gentleman, very bright but average looking, certainly no Tom Selleck, and he described someone who looked like Farrah Fawcett. Well, there's no way. Only a 10 can ask for a 10." That means compromise, as one of Stern's clients, whom we will call Lucy, quickly found. She was 37 and divorced and was after the sort of man who sets hearts pounding on L.A. Law. She was introduced to Nigel, who was pleasant in every way, except, oh, horror, he was bald, and Lucy's vision of a dreamboat did not include an absence of hair. At first she was cold to Nigel's advances. But gradually her heart warmed, and last December they were married.

Why, it might reasonably be asked, would people pay Stern $1,450 for a 24- month effort to find them a mate, rather than doing for themselves what is supposed to come naturally? The answer is dismally simple. "They are just too busy. If you are working 60 to 80 hours a week, there is very little time to go out hunting. Single people have organized their lives to get what they want: the good education, the condo, the car. Then one day they say, Gee, I want to be married. So they hire a consultant like me to help them. They can't buy love really -- but kind of."

The idea is hardly new. The origins of matchmaking go back to antiquity, springing from the custom, once common in Europe and the Orient, of arranged marriages. Even today in the U.S. the Old World custom persists: Manhattan marriage broker Dan Field says he is often consulted by parents who want him to arrange a match for their children. But what is becoming more common in the U.S. is the gold-card matchmaker for the affluent among those 43 million unmarried Americans between 18 and 44. "Across America," says San Francisco matchmaker Barbara Tackett, "there are people making $35,000 a year who will pay $3,500 to a matchmaker without blinking an eye."

There is the inevitable criticism that "this is a fakey way to meet," admits Stern, "because love should hit you like a lightning bolt." Well, she insists, it doesn't. "The chances of meeting somebody nowadays in urban areas who is real suitable for you and who is going to be on your level in terms of intelligence and your life goals has got to be 1 in 1,000." Pamela Lloyd, a 30-year-old M.B.A. at a Chicago corporate real estate services firm, agrees. "It's hit or miss. All the men I met couldn't accept intelligence in a woman or that she might be making more money than they were." In desperation she went to Personal Profiles. Her first six dates had "no chemistry," but then she met railroad engineer William Lloyd, 40. Both are Roman Catholics and avid environmentalists, shared beliefs that helped produce sparks, resulting in their marriage last April. Says Pamela: "Bill met all of my criteria."

The idea that sharing makes good pairing came to Stern during four years of observing marital customs in Taiwan, where her then husband was working for a U.S. bank. A native of Scotland and a graduate of the University of Aberdeen, she had met her future husband, an American, while studying in France. She returned to the U.S. from Taiwan in 1976 and, following her divorce, enrolled in law school in Chicago and later joined a law firm. In early 1982 she opened Personal Profiles. "In Taiwan the matchmaking philosophy was that love would grow and be based on respect and comfort, that you don't necessarily have to have an ongoing sexual passion in marriage."

Every month Stern, who herself was married this year, spends a week selecting possible matches for her clients, trying to find a pattern of likenesses, rather like assembling a multidimensional jigsaw puzzle. Much of the rest of her time is spent advising on anxieties of the heart: most members are very definite about a potential partner's height, build and age. Already members have gone through a fairly rigorous selection process: they must have incomes over $30,000 a year (unless they are students) and have a university degree (self-made people excepted). All are questioned about sexual diseases, particularly AIDS, although no tests are required. Some face automatic rejection -- the obese, chain smokers and women over 60 -- because, says Stern, "we simply don't have people to match them with."

Even after each client has received the names of two matches, Stern and her staff of six do not abandon the libido to take its wobbly course. Hopeful marriage mates are given coaching to learn the finer points of courtship ("Packaging Yourself for Marriage," "Getting Past First Base"). "Men and women constantly complain about mixed signals," says Stern. "The men accuse women of agreeing to a second date, then never returning calls. The women say, 'Why do they always say I'll call you, when they don't mean it?' We tell all our clients: tell the truth."

She is particularly hard on many career women, who, she says, "have no idea how to connect with a man in an intimate relationship. They want to be on a pedestal and have everything done for them. A surprisingly large number of women who are liberated and successful in business are not that way in dating because they have learned from their mothers to be passive and indirect."

Stern is much kinder about her male clients, who, it seems, are somewhat old hat in actually "trying to please women in dating and courtship." They are shocked, she says, when women they are introduced to "come on too strong sexually." She recalls one thoroughly offended man blurting after his first date: "She jumped me." And women are complaining there are no decent men left out there?