Winnipeg matchmaker helps baby boomers find love with personal dating service

Dating can be tough at any age, but for a 67-year-old Winnipeg woman, getting back into the scene after losing the love of her life posed different challenges than dating when she was younger. 

For Anne, who's protecting her identity, one of the challenges about navigating dating today was using technology to find potential partners.

When she was younger she would go out with groups and she could judge who she liked face-to-face.

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"You'd see how they interact with each other, you would see how they talk to each other, if they were kind, if they were somebody you didn't want to go near," she said. "Today... everything is by computer or email."

Her husband's death more than a decade ago was relatively sudden and left her focusing on her children and work.

"It was numbing," she said. "I wasn't looking for anybody for a number of years."

Though comfortable on her own, Anne said she is now ready to share her life with someone else.

She tried dating websites but was discouraged because there were more single women than men and she felt she was being compared to other women, she said. She looked for another option.

"If you're running a business and you lose your president you go to a head hunter. You go to someone who knows the market, who does the back ground checks, who does the leg work," she said. 

Anne paid $600 plus tax for Winnipeg matchmaker Lianne Tregobov, who owns Camelot Introductions — a dating service where potential clients are pre-screened and receive a criminal record check. 

"They come to me. They don't know how to date anymore. Times have changed and definitely they've had wonderful relationships… and they want another wonderful relationship," Tregobov said. 

Differences between single men and women baby boomers

More than half of Tregobov's clientele is single baby boomers — people who are between the ages of 51 and 70 — because they can afford to hire a matchmaker, she said.

"Men have a tendency to pass away sooner than women so we have an abundance of amazing women who are looking for guys," she said.

Tregobov said she has noticed a trend of what she calls "casserole ladies." 

"A casserole lady is somebody who follows the obituaries or pre-plans knowing that a fellow is losing his spouse and then makes herself available, feeds him, knocks on his door with casseroles and often is trying to find her place," she said. "Very often men take the first bus that goes by because they don't want to feel the pain and they don't want to grieve."

She also helps single baby boomer men be more realistic in their search for new love, she said.

"Sometimes the guys think that the 30-year-old might be interested in a 60-year-old and that is simply not reality. So we let them know who they would probably have success with," she said. 

Picking a partner with good health is also important for boomers, Tregobov said.

For baby boomers, dating is no longer necessarily about finding the partner to build a family with, Tregobov said.

"Now you're at a point in your life where you don't have to have somebody, you want somebody to enhance your life," she said. "When people have had a wonderful relationship, they have the know-how and they can take that experience and invest it into their next relationship and it's actually honouring the person that you've lost."