The offices of eLove Matchmaking are tucked away on the fourth floor of an ordinary office building in Edina. Walls are gray; neighbors are corporate; human elements are scant. Hidden inside eLove’s executive workplace is an unmarked black book. (Don’t judge it by the austere cover.) The contents of this book are evidence of eLove’s kind touch towards its clients.
This scrapbook has blue and green pages, some adorned with red paper hearts.
Photos of couples on their wedding day have zigzag edges and are pasted on the pages at angles. With first-hand messages, couples share their love stories, and how their happiness was made possible with the help of eLove matchmakers.
Sabrina Lorbiecki, head matchmaker at eLove, dutifully shares pertinent details about the three personality tests and more than 100 criteria included in their matchmaking process, but she speaks passionately about the happy couples she puts together with a personal touch. That’s something online dating sites can’t claim, she says.
“We have personal matchmakers; it isn’t about checks and balances. If you work with an [online dating service] and you forget to check a box, somebody doesn’t come your way,” says Lorbiecki, who has 14 years of matchmaking experience. After attending St. Mary’s University in Winona, Minn., the now-33-year-old from Brooklyn Park applied for a Matchmaking Assistant job with Together Dating. She interviewed and knew it was something she wanted to do. "Hearing about the engagements and the happy stories, I thought about it," she says. "I wanted to give back to my community, and this is a business in which I can see the change."
Examples abound of how the human element in eLove’s matchmaking has changed the lives of its 1,500 current members in the Twin Cities metro area. ELove, formerly known as Together Dating before the companies merged this spring, is an eight-employee franchise that meets with clients face to face. Matchmakers screen clients to understand their preferences and intentions—everything from their religious views to whether they go out to the bar for drinks or if they want children.
“We cut through that red tape,” Lorbiecki says. “Something that might take six, eight months to find out, we are able to get through that in the forefront.”
One match in particular took everything Lorbiecki had. She set a man up with 44 matches in four years before he found the one. He later proposed marriage on a cliff in Scotland, she discloses.
Then there’s a shy guy who had never been in a serious relationship, and needed Lorbiecki’s encouragement to go on dates. “I get to be the one that lights the fire,” she says. “That is the fun part. I get to encourage them when they are reluctant.”
“Everyone wants to be helpful,” she admits. “And I am responsible for [bringing about] thousands of relationships and now even children.”
And there’s the man that only wanted to date a woman from within a 15-minute commute of his Maple Grove home, but Lorbiecki insisted that he give a woman from Hudson, Wis., a chance. Lorbiecki said it was his “perfect match.” They were soon married, and their story is the first one in eLove’s scrapbook.
“As we all know in life, there are so many gray areas,” Lorbiecki says. “When you go to online, it’s really black and white. If you set your dating criteria at 5-foot-10 to 6-foot-1, what happens if your perfect match is 5-9 or 6-2? You’ve completely eliminated that person, which is why those types of dating services aren’t as successful with a long-term relationship.”
After 44 years of marriage, Walter went through eight “very tough” years as a widower. That changed in October when the 70-year-old Prior Lake man met 68-year-old Nancy through eLove. (Their last names are withheld to respect their privacy.)
“I can’t explain it,” Walter says. “It’s the best thing that had happened to me in eight years.”
Nancy, who was also widowed, could share in the loss of a loved one with Walter, as well as many hobbies. They go on walks or out to a movie or dinner. They enjoy drinking wine. He calls her “dear.”
“I never would have found a man like this in any other way,” Nancy says. “He is the most genuine man. He tells me his feelings. He tells me what he likes and doesn’t like. We are so compatible.”
Walter says he is considering marriage.
“Widows sometimes don’t think they will find a partner again,” Lorbiecki says, “then you can have a success story like them where they are really happy.”
Lorbiecki was so good at her job, it left Nancy and Walter with some sticker shock. Both purchased an introductory package, but neither needed the amount of matches they signed up for; Nancy used one match before meeting Walter, while she was his first match. “It was so quick, we didn’t have many meetings,” Nancy says. “It was a little much, and that was the fewest [matches] you can buy.”
Besides perhaps the cost, Nancy and Walter would have it no other way.
“When we didn’t have anyone, it was rough,” Nancy says. “For a while now, we can share things together.”
Lorbiecki, calls Walter a “sweet man,” and helping guys like him was why she got into the business. “Once you are in the dating industry, it sucks you in,” she adds. “There are few businesses or jobs out there that you have a direct impact in someone’s life.”
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