A good man is hard to find. A good woman, too.
As a professional matchmaker, Paige Greytok knows we’re not just talking lyrics here.
For more than a year, she has been trying to find the perfect mate for a wealthy Chicago businessman, “a sensational, down-to-earth guy with lots of old-school charm.”
But he’s very picky, and paranoid that the women he dates are really just after his money. So he has hired Greytok to travel the world looking for someone lively and smart with whom he could settle down and raise a family.
“He’s middle-aged, but the woman has to be young enough to have lots of kids,” Greytok said. “The oldest she can be is 32. She has to believe in the traditional values, be an ethical person, very warm.
“And he’s not looking for a model or someone very sophisticated. He’s more interested in fresh-faced and perky, someone like Mary Richards in the old `Mary Tyler Moore’ program.”
Last week, Greytok’s search took her to Moscow, and she was startled to discover just how raw interpersonal relationships can be in Russia.
“I like to ask the women I interview what turns them off in a man,” she said. “Usually it’s something like not being punctual or not calling when he said he would. But here the women said they were turned off by cruelty, hitting and drunkenness.”
After meeting nine would-be brides in her suite at the posh Metropol Hotel, Greytok flew off to London and Edinburgh, where more interviews were lined up.
In Moscow, a local marriage agency selected the candidates. In England and Scotland they were recruited via ads in British newspapers.
“My client has always been interested in a certain type of European woman,” Greytok said. “And when he read that there were marriage agencies in Moscow, he thought it would be a good idea if I came here, too.”
Her two-day Moscow stay cost a lot of money. Business-class airfare, $900 a night in the Metropol, $500 to the local agency, another $2,000 for a bodyguard and translator. But to the lonely businessman back in Chicago, that’s just chump change, she says with a laugh.
This week, Greytok will get together with her client and describe the women she met. She’ll recommend the ones she thinks he should meet.
“No, there’s nothing kinky going on here,” she insisted. “My client is a perfect gentleman. Everyone I’ve fixed him up with has liked him.
“He just needs help finding the right woman. He never learned how to date when he was younger. He was too busy building up his business. He’s very prominent now. You’d recognize his name if I mentioned it.”
Greytok, 32, has been a matchmaker for 2 1/2 years, but she has been bringing the right people together for a lot longer than that. A graduate of Northwestern University, she worked for several years as an executive recruiter.
She made the move from corporate to conjugal connections after she was approached by a matchmaker and asked to date one of the woman’s clients.
“I realized there were a lot of people in the same boat,” she said. “I was in that boat myself-still am, actually. It has been very difficult for me to meet that special someone. So I decided this would be a neat way to make a living, and a good way to help lots of other people.”
She established Selective Search Inc., which she runs out of her Lincoln Park home. Since then, she has arranged hundreds of introductions, which have resulted in six walks down the aisle and several current engagements, she says.
“I’m very selective about my clients,” she said. “I accept only about 25 percent of those who apply. They have to be very upscale-professionally successful, well-educated, self-confident. And I don’t take people who are desperate to fall in love. You can’t help people like that.”
Why would so many upscale, educated people need an intermediary to help them find Mr. or Ms. Right?
“Typically, they work long hours,” she explained. “They travel a lot on business. If they have some free time on the weekends, they go out on their boats or play golf. Life is good, but suddenly they realize they’re missing out on an important part of it.”
There are two types of clients at Selective Search. For an annual fee of $900, Greytok arranges introductions to other clients she thinks they could fall in love with.
“My people don’t look through pictures or videos,” she said. “They have to trust me to match them up with the right sort of person. After all, the aim here is to get people married. I’m not a dating service. My people really have to be looking for commitment.”
Clients in the second category pay $3,000 a year, plus all expenses. To find potential mates for these men and women, Greytok searches far and wide, placing personal ads in upscale publications, consulting agencies in other cities and other countries.
“They think I can find them someone out there better than what they could find for themselves,” Greytok said. “I only agree to do this for them if I think there’s a real chance of finding what they want.”
Occasionally, someone will ask Greytok to set him or her up with a specific person. Just before she left for Moscow, she said, another businessman hired her to contact a Chicago TV personality and ask if she would go out with him.
“I sent her a letter, and I’m waiting for a reply,” Greytok said.
So with all this experience, why is Greytok still single? More to the point, why hasn’t she set her sights on that wealthy Chicago businessman?
“He’s a real sweetheart,” she said, smiling warmly, “but frankly, he’s not my type.”
