Matchmakers

 It’s remarkably easy to talk to someone like Maria Avgitidis.

AVGITIDIS: I’m a really extroverted person. I consider that my superpower. I know how to connect with people quickly. 

 This is a huge advantage in her line of work.

AVGITIDIS: I am the CEO of Agape Match and the author of the book “Ask a Matchmaker: Matchmaker Maria’s No-Nonsense Guide to Finding Love.” It’s like paying for a friend who only thinks about your dating life all day. 

 Before starting Agape, which in Greek means the deepest form of love, Avgitidis had other plans.

AVGITIDIS: I really thought I was going to go into the foreign service. When I got into grad school, I created this thing called New York City International Relations — and it would meet every Thursday at 7pm. And people would show up to network with other people that were working in international relations or studying international relations. But, who was actually coming? It was single people. Pretty soon someone got married. And then the rest is history! I thought to myself, “Oh my God, I could do this for a living? Just like my grandmother!” Now, I’m a fourth generation matchmaker.

 For the Freakonomics Radio Network, this is The Economics of Everyday Things. I’m Zachary Crockett. Today: matchmakers.

*      *      *

 More than anything else, what Maria Avgitidis learned from her Greek family is that matchmakers are embedded in their communities.

AVGITIDIS: There was always a matchmaker role in every village. My grandmother, her mother, and her grandmother were all matchmakers. And I guess you could say they were professional because there was some sort of payment towards them — but it was like a goat, maybe a part of someone’s dowry. But nothing that would sustain them. My grandmother lived on a very small island — population, you know, 1,000. Her door was always open, she made the best coffee, she was a fantastic secret keeper, because she heard all the gossip! But that sort of information retention can then instinctually help their community when there is a question of, “Well, I have a son — it’s time for him to get married.”

HANNAH MANDELBAUM: I got some nice boys! Fine, respectable boys. Now, she’s a lovely girl. She opens her eyes, she looks around, she meets a fella — with a little help, huh? (cackling laughter)

 That’s a scene from the 1988 film “Crossing Delancey.” It’s about a single woman named Isabelle in New York City, who gets set up against her will by a matchmaker brought in by her grandmother. Isabelle is mortified to have the service foisted on her. And Avgitidis gets it.

AVGITIDIS: When I think about what my grandmother did, there was meddling. Everyone was involved, because marriage was a tool. You know, when you’re marrying two people, you’re essentially creating a micro-economy. You have this place where now there’s an alliance where we can trade goods and barter with each other and help each other out. 

 The past century has seen the women’s movement, the acceptance of same-sex marriage, and the rise of the billion-dollar-plus online dating industry — all of which have changed the way Americans find love. Like Isabelle, we expect to choose for ourselves.

And it’s a lot of work, even with help. Avgitidis doesn’t object to apps like Tinder and Bumble.

AVGITIDIS: I don’t call them dating apps. These are meetup apps. And the moment you start calling them that, the higher your success will be on those apps. What’s happened right now is that a lot of people look for people they could date while laying on the couch while a rerun of “The Bear” is running on their TV. 

 In an ecosystem like that, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed with choices, and underwhelmed with results. It’s even easier to feel alone.

AVGITIDIS: Modern dating is really hard. And it’s really hard in different ways. If you are someone that was born, let’s say, before 1988, you probably have had experience going to the mall when you were a teenager and learning how to be rejected by a woman, or a man, from the neighboring high school when you asked them out. You still remember analog dating. And so it can be a little easier, when you go out, to interact with people and create some sort of connection. But if you were born after 1988, it’s not just social media that happened. Malls started to close, we had the increase of online shopping. Digital dating became the default for most people because they never experienced analog dating. And now I’m not even talking about the pandemic! Now you have this whole new generation of people who were never even given the tools to communicate outside of a Zoom. The thing is that: so much of what compatibility is, and so many connections happen, when you have familiarity, spending time with someone in a physical space. 

 So, matchmakers like Avgitidis are finding themselves increasingly in demand. A 2023 Marketdata report estimated the matchmaker industry to be worth nearly $1.5 billion dollars globally. Almost 40 percent of that is in the U.S., where there are about 2,000 professionals at work. Even Match.com added an a-la-carte service in 2021, where actual human coaches suggest matches for members. The thing is, it’s not hard for someone to simply call themself a matchmaker.

AVGITIDIS: It is an extremely low barrier to entry, I’ll tell you that. There is a certifying body, it’s called the Global Love Institute, and to do that you would have to take their courses and understand a little bit of the landscape that is the matchmaking world. And then we also have a trade association called the Matchmakers Alliance, and what that tends to do is attract collaborative matchmakers. So many matchmakers in the United States are solopreneurs. They’re by themselves, and they don’t know what’s the right or what’s the wrong, so this trade association helps them. 

 There are three main buckets of matchmaking services, and the degree of attention that a client can expect will vary, depending on how much he or she is willing to pay. At the high end, you have the boutique services like Agape Match. Those account for much of the market.

AVGITIDIS: I would say that in the U.S. it’s probably like 90 percent boutique matchmaking services. And the big part of a boutique matchmaking service is that the CEO is also one of the senior matchmakers — they’re part of the matchmaking team, they’re not just managing matchmakers. My company has like eight employees, and we all work together to help the client. 

 Next you have the national chains, like Kelleher International, Selective Search, or Three Day Rule.

AVGIDITIS: So, here you have the CEO who’s managing matchmakers. Typically in those services, a matchmaker might be in charge of, let’s say, 10 to 15 clients at any given point. 

 Then you have what Avgitidis considers a dating service.

AVGITIDIS: Like Tawkify. Tawkify — it’s way more volume. And that’s a lot when you consider that people want to talk to their matchmaker. It can be really hard when there’s such a huge client load. In my company, it’s myself and three senior matchmakers. And we together manage 15 clients at a time. So that level of service is just going to be inherently different. But also the price is going to be different, too.

 Tawkify charges just under $5,000 for 3 matches, but other services can go as low as $500 per match. Meanwhile, at the highest-end boutiques, a matchmaker might personally interview 100 people in order to come up with just one date for a client. This kind of service can run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars for a 6-to-12-month membership. Agape Match, which is based in New York City, is slightly more modest.

AVGITIDIS: At my company, it can range from $20,000 to $100,000. 

CROCKETT: How would you describe your typical client that comes to you for help with matchmaking? 

AVGITIDIS: Our typical client tends to be a person who — they don’t have a problem getting dates, they have a problem with their time management. They might be working long hours, they might assess risk in a different way. And they’re really just looking for someone that they can outsource this very time-intensive thing, because they don’t have the social network that they go to to help them meet someone on their own. And because I’m in New York City, a lot of our clients might work, let’s say, in finance, but we’ve had people that are lawyers, doctors, entrepreneurs. We’ve had a few athletes. And we’ve also had chief executives of Fortune 20 companies, like really big companies. And what’s interesting about that type of client is they probably need the match to one day sign a prenup. So, now I have to have these really weird conversations with women, like, “Would you sign a prenup?” — before they’ve even met that person!

 This is just one of the many challenges of taking on clients with high expectations.

AVGITIDIS: I think what’s happened in the United States is that a matchmaker is sometimes treated like a genie. So, the moment money is exchanged, I’ll get a long list of, you know, “Well, now since I paid you, now they need to have a full head of hair, now they need be this height, now they need to make this amount of money.”

 And what a client wants is not always what will make them happy. In fact, a 2024 study out of the Relationships and Technology Lab at Arizona State University, found that part of a matchmaker’s regular work is helping their clients reassess what they desire in a mate.

AVGITIDIS: That’s what it feels like sometimes. I’m like, “I can’t give you this — you’re allergic to this.”

 That’s coming up.

*      *      *

 At Agape Match, a relationship with a potential client starts with what Maria Avgiditis calls a “discovery call.” Her chief operating officer Louie Felix sets up a long chat to suss out the client’s interests, tastes, lifestyle, relationships, and desires for the future. He’ll also conduct a so-called “dating audit,” looking for patterns the client may have developed, and an analysis of what’s worked and what hasn’t. Plus, there’s what the client says they want.

AVGITIDIS: “Okay, I’m looking for X, Y, Z.” And it’s like, “Well, that’s great — but do they want you?” There’s this thing that we create in our office called a barometer of attraction report, a BOA. And we have one assigned to each of our clients that tells us, like, “All right, here’s the typical kind of person he’s attracted to. Let’s find matches that not only fit the communication style and lifestyle and values of this client, but also that fall into this umbrella of what they might be attracted to physically.” With women, they more ask, like, “How emotionally healthy is he?” I have to determine what access do I have to the person who’s going to not only fit this criteria, but is also looking for someone just like my client. And if that is really hard to find — if that means I have to start from square one in recruitment — then that increases the recruitment cost. 

 Recruitment refers to a huge pool of singles, called “matches.” They’ve submitted their profiles to Agape’s database for free, after answering detailed questions about themselves and what they’re looking for. They’re not clients, so there’s no guarantee they’ll get a date, but they are in the game, if the right opportunity arises.

Building that database takes work.

AVGITIDIS: My philosophy has always been, if I want to create a community, I need my community to trust me and then join my database on their own. So I have a podcast called Ask a Matchmaker. I’m also on social media — “Ask-a-Matchmaker Wednesdays.” I’ve been doing that for seven years. We have an insane database that’s constantly growing, so we need someone who’s manning the ship at all times. I have to sometimes pay to belong to certain trade associations, or clubs, to be able to maneuver those environments to meet potential matches.

 For a number of years, Avgitidis served a range of people — men, women, straight, gay — but as her business grew it became too difficult to serve everyone well. So, she sold off the LGBTQ portions of her business to LGBTQ matchmakers, and in 2018, she narrowed her lane.

AVGITIDIS: Because they were creating the community. So they had just a much richer access to eligible singles that they could set up their clients with.

 Today, Agape’s matchmaking clients are primarily straight men, and her database of matches contains about 30,000 straight women. Those are the people Avgiditis spends most of her time actually talking to. Her team’s deep knowledge of these women is her value proposition

AVGITIDIS: That heavy lifting of recruitment is in the first four to six weeks. How we organize potential matches is, first we’ll get let’s say a group of 30 matches based on some quantifiable data points — what religions and ethnicities they’re open to, what politics they might have shared with us. 

CROCKETT: That narrows the pool down to something more manageable.

AVGITIDIS: Totally. When we start interviewing people, we try to temperamentally qualify them — how they assess risk, or how they orient themselves in life and what is important to them. Because that’s going to then determine, like, “Okay, can we go to the next round?” — which is now, “Are they a match, lifestyle-wise?” For instance, if someone tells me that they do pickleball every Saturday morning, I’m not saying that the other person has to also do pickle ball. But I would like to hear that their match is someone who likes to do things on the weekends, instead of just catch up on a podcast while they’re cleaning. We’re considering, “What would it look like this weekend if they were dating? Will this work?” 

 If they feel like it’s a match, they start the process of coordinating the first date. That’s something Avgitidis began taking on back in 2011, out of necessity.

AVGITIDIS: I said, “I’m no longer giving you people cell phones because you’re all canceling on each other.” You put so many hours finding someone fantastic for your client and then they send the wrong text message, or they get a headache and they’re like, “I can’t go on the date now.” 

CROCKETT: They fumble it.

AVGITIDIS: They fumble it. No more! We’re gonna date like it’s 1988 — I’m gonna coordinate it. So each person will get a profile, like a bio of their match. And then we will tell them, based on their shared availability, the time, day, and place of their date. When they show up, the host or hostess will seat them together, and then hopefully they have a great time. The next day, we will ask for their date feedback from both parties. And if it went well, then we also set up the second date for them. Some people, they’ll do a second date like two weeks later, if they’re left to their own devices. And I’m like, “No, no no, your second date’s happening in the next 48 to 72 hours. I don’t care, make yourself available, you’re going out.” We also collect feedback after their second date. It’s been my experience that if my clients get to a fifth date, that’s usually who they’re gonna marry. 

CROCKETT: You mentioned you take on maybe 15 clients at any given time. 

AVGITIDIS: Yeah, that comes out to about like 40 to 50 a year. 

CROCKETT: And how many would you estimate actually apply to try to get you? 

AVGITIDIS: A thousand. 

CROCKETT: So you’re like getting into Harvard or something. 

AVGITIDIS: Yeah, but I don’t want that. People are still looking for love — I’m just not their matchmaker. So we still try to do our best to send someone to the right matchmaker. We probably say no to five million dollars worth of business a year. 

CROCKETT: And do you get a referral fee of some kind for passing that business on to your partners? 

AVGITIDIS: Yeah, I think that’s pretty typical in most businesses, right? But it’s really important to us to make the match with the matchmaker in the appropriate client. 

 When a client signs a contract with Agape, the company is legally required to provide at least one romantic introduction per month, over the six-month period. This is courtesy of something called the New York State Dating Service Consumer Bill of Rights.

AVGITIDIS: We’re the only state that has like match required minimums. It’s the reason why we can’t take on a lot of clients, despite the fact that I think I might have a match for them. Because I would need more than a month to find a match for them. Even though our typical client — they’ve received anywhere between 10 and 15 matches by the end of the contract, depending on how quickly they got into a relationship. 

CROCKETT: How do you define success? 

AVGITIDIS: We want you to have dated someone for at least six months for it to be a success. The contract does say that.

CROCKETT: I’ve noticed that in the matchmaking industry, some people market their success rate. Is that something you keep track of ?

AVGITIDIS: I used to think about it a lot. But, so much of what we track is how many second dates are our clients going on — that’s the metric that really matters. Because my client needs to be aware where my responsibility starts and ends.

AVGITIDIS: I can set you up on a first date. I can sit you up on the best first date you’ve ever been on. But if you’re not a good partner, if you don’t exhibit the qualities that would be required for someone to want to not only fall in love with you, but to choose to like you for the next 6 months, 6 years, 16 years, 26 years, whatever it is, that’s not because of me. And the moment I started educating my client in this way, it took a lot of the pressure off of me too. 

CROCKETT: Thinking about this as a business. Each client is also a financial risk to you — you’re using your valuable time.

AVGITIDIS: Yeah, we’ve had to do a lot of things to our contracts to protect the integrity of the business. Every time we have a discovery call, our chief operating officer calls me to recap that conversation, with my other senior matchmakers, the conversation is a financial liability question. And then also it’s an emotional liability question: is this person going to drain us emotionally? And we usually reject people on that part. I will tell you that most professional matchmakers shut down their businesses at 18 months. And that is because while it is very easy to take someone’s money, it is extremely hard to service them or to not experience burnout with certain clients’ personal delusions of what they deserve in the dating experience. 

 Even so, Avgitidis says she can still surprise herself.

AVGITIDIS: Last year we had a client who was 65 years old, and he wanted to meet a woman who was between the ages of 40 and 46. And I asked him, “Why is that the age range?” And he said, “Well, my ex-wife was 20 years younger than me, so I want to maintain that — that’s what I’m attracted to.” Instead of rejecting him, I actually just went into my database and I said, “Well, do I have any women that are between the ages of 40 and 46 that would date men over 65?” And I did — I had like 200 women that had written that in their profile. And I was like, “Well, let’s try it out. Let’s see what happens.” And he is now engaged to his third match — so, we got him in a relationship within six weeks. 

 As for her matchmaking forbears, her grandmother, great-grandmother, and great-great-grandmother would be quite pleased with how Maria Avgitidis’s career has turned out.

AVGITIDIS: Eighty percent of my clients are just like, “Maria, I trust you. Do your job.” And those clients are the best because we’re all on the same page here. We’re just trying to get you in a relationship with someone who is just as amazing as you.

CROCKETT: How many first dates do you estimate you’ve been responsible for? 

AVGITIDIS: I feel like the last time I calculated it, it was orbiting around 7,000 first dates. 

 Her personal life has turned out pretty well, too.

AVGITIDIS: I am married. We just celebrated our nine-year wedding anniversary, and we have two kids. The person that set me up, that introduced me, was the boyfriend of my employee.

 For The Economics of Everyday Things, I’m Zachary Crockett.

*      *      *

This episode was produced by Sarah Lilley, and mixed by Jeremy Johnston. We had help from Daniel Moritz-Rabson and Dalvin Aboagye.

AVGIDITIS: I don’t think most people need a matchmaker. I think most need a new circle of friends.