The woman to the right is Beverly, and she's tired of going on a few dates with a man only to discover he's actually not a lawyer but a pizza boy, or he has a history of white-collar felonies -- which can be a common problem in her native Boca Raton. So she hired Lowell Gannon, matchmaker extraordinaire. "She's a wonderful human being, full of life," gushes Gannon, fully on the clock. "She's 64, but she looks like she's 60."
You might have noticed Beverly's image flashing on the top of your screen, along with the words three-county search as you browsed New Times in the past couple of days. That's Gannon's work. Beverly is the first client of his 1 Match at a Time dating service, which takes all the adventure and spontaneity of finding a lover and grinds it through a pasta maker for a good reason: to cut out the slimeballs. "I took my expertise in human resources," says Gannon, a former corporate headhunter who's also the CEO of a gay professional match-making service, "and put it to use it in the love arena."
Yep, before you even meet Beverly, you're gonna have to submit a resumé and a driver's license, ace a customized interview, and survive a criminal background check. Gannon -- who lurks around gallery openings and other social events looking for matches for his clients -- will then whittle the suitor pool down to ten, hold a cocktail party, and further trim the herd. At the end of the three- to four-week process -- as the name implies, the service handles only one client at a time -- Beverly will have hopefully found some millionaire safari-hunter who's never heard of Craigslist and boasts a handlebar mustache and a Scotch collection.
Oh yeah, and getting to meet Beverly ain't free, either. While Gannon's clients pay the recession-special fee of $500 for his services, the suitors pay $100 to try their luck at the cocktail party.
