‘When you’re in your 20s, you’re looking for tall, dark and handsome,” says Joann Mondrus, a 58-year-old flight attendant from Forest Hills, Queens. “But when you’re in your 50s or 60s, you’re looking for hair, teeth and a good pension.”
Lucky for her, the divorcée found just that — Brian Eichelberger, a 59-year-old law enforcement retiree. The pair met online.
Internet dating has long been thought of as a tool for the young, but it got a huge boost with the older crowd this month when 71-year-old Martha Stewart publicly joined Match.com in an effort to find male companionship. Ourtime.com, a dating site for over 50s, has grown 66 percent in new membership since its inception two years ago. And last December, AARP joined forces with Howaboutwe to create an online dating platform geared toward baby boomers.
Mondrus started online dating to prove a point. Her friend was looking for love online — but expected to find a man who was rich, had a Ph.D and also a large house. Not surprisingly, the friend hadn’t had much luck.
“I told [her] she was doing something wrong,” says Mondrus, who then put up a profile on Ourtime.com that she felt was realistic. It took two days for her future husband to contact her. The pair married three years ago.
While things came easily for Mondrus, Laurie Davis, the Manhattan based online dating consultant behind eFlirtexpert.com, says a virtual courtship doesn’t always immediately compute for the older generation.
“Boomers are the largest growing population on dating sites,” says Davis. “The biggest obstacle for [them] is searching through matches . . . They want romance and chivalry, and things like that don’t always come across on the screen.”
And though sites like Ourtime and Seniorsmeet.com are for people of a certain age, one of the biggest issues is that very number. “Everybody lies about their age in this demo,” says Davis, who has to coax her clients not to fudge it. “New Yorkers especially want someone active, not someone sitting around their apartment.”
According to Howaboutwe, a site where users suggest dates, the most popular activities for this age demo are foodie events, walks, bike rides and exhibits.
That’s not to say some sexy senior citizens aren’t seeking more physical activities. Ken Solin, the 68-year-old dating expert for AARP, says he walked out on a first date after a 60-plus woman started stripping naked in front of him. “This isn’t the ’60s and ’70s. We’re not having random sex with strangers anymore,” says Solin, who is writing a book about boomer dating. He met his serious girlfriend on Okcupid.com six months ago.
Marion Chorvat is on sites like Ourtime and eHarmony. The 70-year-old divorcee recently had a man two years her junior ask her to be his “Mrs. Robinson.” Though Chorvat didn’t accept his first date invitation to visit a nudist colony, she said it was better than talking about recent operations. “I don’t want to hear about your prostate cancer on a first date,” says Chorvat.
And just because they are embracing new technology, it doesn’t mean they’re ignoring traditions.
Buffalo resident Steve Hooker, 62, met his now fiancée Alair Salvadego, 51, on Ourtime.com. The pair moved in together upstate and Hooker proposed to Salvadego in her native Brazil, but not before asking his girlfriend’s 80-year-old mom for her daughter’s hand. “Her mom stood up and said, ‘Welcome to our family.’ Everybody was crying,” says Hooker, a divorcee. He proposed in front of her whole family. “This isn’t going to be my first love,” he says. “This is going to be my last love.”