Some are born to dance. Others, to run. Elizabeth — call her Betty — MacInnis was born to match.
By the time she decided to become a professional matchmaker about two years ago, she had already helped a few dozen friends and colleagues hook up.
“I’ve been doing this my whole life,” says MacInnis, who was matching back in the schoolyard.
Her inspiration has always been love itself. “I realized early that it’s important to be happy by yourself. But to be with someone, that’s 10 times better. That’s riding up in an air balloon.”
But early on, both love and career were not quite euphoric for the Edmontonian. She married at 23 and had her first of two daughters less than a year later. By age 30 she was divorced and returned to the workforce.
A decade later, she was married again — happily this time — and ready for passion in her work, too. She went to New York City to take a five-day course at the Matchmaking Institute, formally launched Real Connections, and began networking like mad to both locate clients and find out what men and women wanted in love.
She kept her full-time job that first year and signed on four clients. One of them became smitten with just the second match MacInnis made for her; a guy she’d found at a home show. MacInnis knew her business was going to work.
Then she got fired from her day job. She was briefly devastated, then admitted she had been shirking her duties and spending her time on her matchmaking business.
So she now devotes all her time to love. For full-service clients, who sign on for either 18 or 24 months, she begins with a meeting in her office and then a lengthy home visit. She takes notes on everything from beliefs to hobbies to family history. If it’s a guy (and in Alberta, there are lots of single guys) who needs help fixing up his place or putting together a decent outfit, she brings in a decorator or image consultant. Then she pairs him with a woman in her database of names, or goes on the prowl for that special someone.
“I have no fear of people. If someone is the CEO of a large company, I don’t get intimidated. I look at him and know that at the end of the day, he’s single, he still needs love.”
And while she relies on her detailed notes and her database to make matches, she mostly uses her uncanny ability to read people to link up soulmates — she’s done it more than a dozen times so far. When she gets the call that a client is in love and doesn’t want any more matches: “I get a shiver up my spine. I’m content.”
