CBS News
Tired of dating apps, more single people are turning to matchmakers to find love
In an era where swiping right is the norm, some singles are revisiting a time-honored tradition to find love: matchmaking. As reality TV shows like “Indian Matchmaking” gain traction, matchmaking is seeing a resurgence among those who are fed of the digital dating scene and the different dating apps.
Blake Newby, a busy young professional, has experienced her fair share of disappointment and frustration with dating apps.
“It felt like a hamster wheel, I was on all of the apps — Raya, Hinge,” she said.
Burned out from the impersonal nature of online dating and longing for a connection, Newby sought something more meaningful. Her search led her to Arvia Few, a modern-day matchmaker who specializes in creating connections for young Black professionals.
Few launched a dating service and social club called Dottie in 2021. Few became a matchmaker because she wanted to address the high percentages of unmarried adults in the community. In the U.S., 71% of adult Black women and 64% of Black men are not married.
“We were always told wait until you get your career and then get married. If you’re waiting till you’re 35, you’ve missed that boat,” said Few.
Matchmaking isn’t just a practice reserved for certain cultures or the plot of romantic films anymore. Professional matchmaker Maria Avgitidis, also known as Matchmaker Maria, has been modernizing the service for today’s busy singles for years. She said that most of her clients are single because they are busy.
“It’s not about the time – it’s about having access to opportunities where you can meet people,” she said.
With prices ranging from a few hundred to thousands of dollars, hiring a matchmaker is an investment in one’s personal life.
Avgitidis’ Agape Matchmaking program, for example, costs between $30,000 and $50,000 for a six-month program, promising a more curated approach to finding love.
“The majority of people are dating through apps, and that’s fine, but you’re meeting strangers. So when you go on these dates … do they even want to be in a relationship?” she said. “It’s really discouraging.”
Joseph Pascaretta, a client of Matchmaker Maria, said he’s learned a lot about dating etiquette through the program.
“Maria has a lot of things you should not do on a first date, second date, third date,” he said. “The kissing is OK (on the first date). The sex is not.”
Avgitidis said the rules are to ensure couples are emotionally compatible before the relationship becomes more physical.
Allison and Elliot Galpern, who met through the matchmaking service Three Day Rule, are a matchmaking success story.
“I was so annoyed with the apps at one point I just deleted the apps and I was like, ‘You know what? The time will come when I (will) meet the person I’m meant to be with,'” Allison Galpern said.
The time came when the couple got married in New York City’s Central Park, an example that finding love through matchmaking can be successful.
Hollywood actor Keanu Reeves made his professional auto racing debut on Saturday at the famed Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
“The Matrix” star, who qualified 31st out of 35 cars, ran as high as 21st before a single-car crash a little more than halfway through the 45-minute race briefly stopped him in his tracks.
Darron Cummings / AP
The 60-year-old spun into the grass without a collision on the exit of Turn 9 when he had about 21 minutes of racing left. He re-entered the course and continued driving, signaling he was uninjured.
Reeves finished 25th.
The actor is competing at Indianapolis in the Toyota GR Cup, a Toyota spec-racing series and a support series for this weekend’s Indy 8 Hour sports car event. He has a second race on Sunday.
Darron Cummings / AP
He is driving the No. 92 BRZRKR car, which is promoting his graphic novel “The Book of Elsewhere.” He is teammates with Cody Jones from “Dude Perfect.”
Reeves has previous racing experience as a former participant in the Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach in the celebrity race. Reeves won the event in 2009.
A passenger successfully landed a small plane on Friday after the pilot had a medical emergency, the Federal Aviation Administration said.
The twin-engine Beechcraft King Air 90 was traveling from Henderson Executive Airport in Las Vegas, Nevada to Monterey Regional Airport in California, with a pilot and one other person on board, the FAA said.
The pilot suffered an unspecified medical emergency while flying, the FAA said, forcing the passenger to take the controls and make an emergency landing at Meadows Field Airport in Bakersfield, California.
The Kern Fire Department told CBS News affiliate KBAX that firefighters were called to a report of a medical emergency on the plane. The pilot was reported to be “incapacitated,” the fire department said. Firefighters saw the plane approach and land safely, then “chased” the plane down the runway in emergency vehicles to meet it.
The FAA did not release the passenger or pilot’s identities nor give an update on the pilot’s condition. The pilot was taken to an area hospital by ambulance. The passenger did not report any injuries.
The FAA and the National Transportation Security Board will investigate the incident, the FAA said.
Congolese authorities began vaccination against mpox on Saturday, nearly two months after the disease outbreak that spread from Congo to several African countries and beyond was declared a global emergency by the World Health Organization.
The 265,000 doses donated to Congo by the European Union and the U.S. were rolled out in the eastern city of Goma in North Kivu province, where hospitals and health workers have been overstretched, struggling to contain the new and possibly more infectious strain of mpox.
Congo, with about 30,000 suspected mpox cases and 859 deaths, accounts for more than 80% of all the cases and 99% of all the deaths reported in Africa this year. All of the Central African nation’s 26 provinces have recorded mpox cases. Officials in Congo previously told CBS News that they’ve struggled to diagnose patients and provide basic care in the vast country of 100 million people, where a fragile, under-resourced healthcare system is also burdened by the stigma associated with the virus.
Although most mpox infections and deaths recorded in Congo are in children under age 15, the doses being administered are only meant for adults and will be given to at-risk populations and front-line workers, Health Minister Roger Kamba said this week.
“Strategies have been put in place by the services in order to vaccinate all targeted personnel,” Muboyayi ChikayaI, the minister’s chief of staff, said as he kicked off the vaccination.
Moses Sawasawa / AP
At least 3 million doses of the vaccine approved for use in children are expected from Japan in the coming days, Kamba said.
Mpox, also known as monkeypox, had been spreading mostly undetected for years in Africa before the disease prompted the 2022 global outbreak that saw wealthy countries quickly respond with vaccines from their stockpiles while Africa received only a few doses despite pleas from its governments.
However, unlike the global outbreak in 2022 that was overwhelmingly focused on gay and bisexual men, mpox in Africa is now being spread via sexual transmission as well as through close contact among children, pregnant women and other vulnerable groups, Dr. Dimie Ogoina, the chair of WHO’s mpox emergency committee, recently told reporters.
More than 34,000 suspected cases and 866 deaths from the virus have been recorded across 16 countries in Africa this year. That is a 200% increase compared to the same period last year, the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.
A lack of diagnostic materials and basic medicines to treat the virus, which can improve survival rates, have also hampered efforts to contain the outbreak, and access to vaccines remains a challenge.
Moses Sawasawa / AP
The continent of 1.4 billion people has only secured a commitment for 5.9 million doses of mpox vaccines, expected to be available from October through December, Dr. Jean Kaseya, head of the Africa CDC, told reporters last week. Congo remains a priority, he said.
At the vaccination drive in Goma, Dr Jean Bruno Kibunda, the WHO representative, warned that North Kivu province is at a risk of a major outbreak due to the “promiscuity observed in the camps” for displaced people, as one of the world’s biggest humanitarian crisis caused by armed violence unfolds there.
The news of the vaccination program brought relief to many in Congo, especially in hospitals that had been struggling to manage the outbreak. Doctors with several charities working in the country have told CBS News they’re overstretched and short on supplies, even having to use tents and mattresses on the floor of makeshift isolation wards to treat a constant influx of patients.
“If everyone could be vaccinated, it would be even better to stop the spread of the disease,” said Dr. Musole Mulambamunva Robert, the medical director of Kavumu Hospital, one of the mpox treatment centers in eastern Congo.
Eastern Congo has been beset by conflict for years, with more than 100 armed groups vying for a foothold in the mineral-rich area near the border with Rwanda. Some have been accused of carrying out mass killings.
