Modern-Day Matchmaking Has The Profile Of A Computer

The other morning I got up early, looked in the mirror, and prepared to meet my Maker. Now, that's a cheap gag. What I mean to say is that I prepared to meet my Matchmaker, lady name of Noel McLane.

This lady bills herself as Matchmaker in The Market with offices in Suite 37, Corner Market Bldg., 94 Pike St. She pairs people up into meaningful relationships.

So I dialed her number and when she came on the line, I said:

``My name is Everett Watkins, and I would like to be matched up with an opposite sex. I have gray hair, age wattles, am overweight, and get most of my exercise pulling cotton out of aspirin bottles. I smoke too much, dislike most music, and tend to lapse into sullen silences. Most people think I am a sloppy dresser, a social nerd and fiscally irresponsible. What do you have in stock that would find me irresistible?''

When she stopped laughing, Noel said, ``I suppose she has to be 26 and come from California.''

That riposte obviously put me in major-league company. Anyway, we agreed to meet at the Athenian for coffee and right away I began to stammer a few disclaimers.

``Look'' I said to Matchmaker McLane, ``I really don't want to be matched up with anybody. It happens that I need something to write about and you might be it. Let's just pretend I'm searching for a soul mate.''

Noel McLane pulled some stuff out of a manila envelope. ``First you have to read this,'' she said, handing me a book. The book, by Judith Sills, Ph.D. is titled, ``How To Stop Looking for Someone Perfect and Find Someone to Love.''

``All my clients must read this,'' she said. The book, I learned later from friends involved in the hope-and-cope industry, is must reading.

``And this,'' she said, producing a 20-page questionnaire booklet. ``You must fill this out, answer all questions. It will take you about 10 hours.''

I didn't say so, but in 10 hours of interrogation, I could lose interest in anyone. Questions included things such as: Do you consider yourself primarily urban, suburban, rural? How do you envision your long-term lifestyle? What are your expectations regarding sexuality? Is fidelity important to you?

And so on, unto the number of 96 questions.

When you finish the questionnaire, Noel McLane studies it carefully. Then, using information (confidential, of course) gleaned from it, she interviews you on video tape for about 30 minutes.

In time, you become a computer profile. From these profiles (about 350 of them), she is able to match people she thinks will be compatible. When the compatible give their permission, they are able to view each other's video tape and decide whether they want to get together.

Again, with permission, phone numbers are exchanged. ``From there on,'' Noel said, ``they are on their own. They make their own contacts, their own dates.''

All this costs a client $900 a year. Some of the matches don't ``take,'' so to speak, so the $900 gets you another try, and more, if necessary. By now, of course, Noel is able to weed out the dingos, the adventurers, the neurotics, early in the going.

``Men of any age find it easier to match up than women,'' McLane says. ``A woman well into her 40s finds it quite difficult. And steady smokers of either sex have a hard time.''

McLane is a long-ago divorcee who found out, firsthand, that meeting acceptable men is no feminine slam dunk. She tried some singles groups, but these, she reports, turned out to be somewhat clutch-and-grab, with too much booze around.

She embarked on a 14-year career as a real estate saleswoman on Mercer Island. She raised four children, three boys and a girl, who have turned out well.

Of the sons, now adults, one is a teacher at the University of Minnesota, another is a playwright, and the third owns his own business. The daughter is a systems analyst.

Noel started her Matchmaker in The Market business in 1985 and claims a higher ``success rate'' than other such introduction services. Finding someone a reasonably competent soul mate, she says, requires work, dedication and personal attention.

``What I've concluded from this work,'' she says, ``is that there are an awful lot of attractive, lonely people out there. There is satisfaction in bringing them together.''

Emmett Watson's column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday in the Northwest section of The Times.