The Matchmakers of Harvard Magazine

Are you a “long-legged, blue-eyed brunette” in search of an “intellectual gentleman” between 50 and “a fit 70”? Perhaps you’re a “Renaissance male” looking for a “petite, slim, smart, fit, and feminine lady” who shares your love of the outdoors? Maybe you’re even a “ruggedly handsome, Boston-based Ph.D.” seeking an “attractive, slender, fit, and kind” partner in the New England area?

You might be well advised to head to the pages of Harvard Magazine’s classified section, where you’ll find these personal advertisements verbatim. Placed by luxury matchmakers, the ads attempt to introduce highly-educated singles to romantic partners in their social milieu.

Personal ads have been around for hundreds of years. Though their popularity has declined since the advent of dating apps, they still run in certain online and print publications. The personals section of the New York Review of Books has been called a “hookup spot for intellectuals” by the New York Post, Hot Singles NYC runs ads in their email newsletter, and, until 2018, Craigslist maintained a colorful personals section called “casual encounters” (“Does mold turn you on? - w4w” reads the top post on casual encounters’ “best-of” list.)

“I like the idea of personal ads, because that is exactly what they are — they’re personal,” says celebrity matchmaker Bonnie Winston, who has placed ads in Harvard Magazine since the late 2000s. “It’s a very good way for me to find quality bachelors and bachelorettes to match my clients up with.”

Across all of the matchmakers interviewed for this piece, this notion of “quality” came up again and again. Clients are looking for matches who are highly-educated and professionally successful — characteristics often corroborated by an Ivy League degree.

Luxury matchmakers aren’t alone in their attempts to curate a high-class dating pool. The League — a dating app geared towards “overly ambitious” singles — requires users to connect their LinkedIn profile to their accounts, and Ivy League clubs in major cities run boozy mixers for single alumni.

Luxury matchmaking is meant to reduce the chaos and uncertainty that comes with popular platforms like Tinder, Hinge, and Bumble. But only a select few can access these services — a matchmaking membership with Winston costs between $20,000 and $60,000, while the median U.S. worker earned just under $48,000 in 2022.

“I don’t want to sound pretentious in any way, because I’m not,” says Susan Dunhoff, another matchmaker who advertises in Harvard Magazine.

“But if a person is on a certain level in life, both successfully, financially,” she says, “then they want to be sure that they’re not taken advantage of because a lot of these people were targets of narcissists or gold diggers.”

“I think there’s nothing wrong with looking for at least your equal,” she continues. “In fact, I condone it.”

“There are online sites for people who are readers, for people who are gay, for people who are skiers, for people who are bridge players,” says Sandy Sternbach, founder of Right Time Consultants.

“The majority of them are educated,” she says. “The majority of them are successful in whatever they do. And that’s the demographic that I work well with.”

Though the matchmakers have made successful matches through personal advertisements, they hedged on referring their former clients for an interview.

“They come to me for the confidentiality element,” says Jill Vandor, an executive matchmaker at Boston-based matchmaking firm LunchDates.

“If they’re open to saying that they met through me, they’re not necessarily saying they met through LunchDates,” she says. “They’re just saying, ‘I met through my friend Jill.’”

Though privacy certainly plays a role in the clients’ hesitance, could there also be an element of embarrassment involved? Are the hopeless romantics of Harvard Magazine ashamed of shelling out five figures to find their life partner?

Sternbach says she is uncertain about the existence of a stigma.

“I would replace that word ‘stigma’ with ‘people are confidential,’” she says. “So, just like not every person will reveal that they’re in therapy, or that their child is being tutored because they’re slow in reading, or someone is going to sit and discuss their financial advisor, people in this demographic — especially people that read and respond to the Harvard personals — are private and confidential.”

The “high-level executive,” “beautiful widow,” and “fun-loving Chinese woman” of Harvard Magazine’s personal ads may pay more than the average person in the hopes of finding their partner. Even so, like most people, they’re looking for the one thing that no amount of cash or credentials can guarantee them: love.

“When they go to the personal ads, they want relationships,” says Winston. “You know, you can have great grades and you can have a million friends and have a good social life and be close with your family, but really at the end of the day, love makes our lives so much more meaningful.”

— Magazine Editor-at-Large Yasmeen A. Khan can be reached at yasmeen.khan@thecrimson.com. Follow her at @yazzywriting.