AILSA CHANG, HOST:
Looking for love is an art, not a science. And yet, people have been trying to crack the code for such a long time, whether through matchmakers or speed dating or, these days, AI. Back in the 1960s, a couple of Harvard students had an idea. Businesses had started using a new technology called computers, and at the time, they were the size of a whole room. They might have been used for big tasks, like processing a company payroll. But what if those clunky computers could be used to get a date? From Radio Diaries, here's the story of the very first computer dating service called Operation Match.
JO MARGOLIS: My name is Jo Margolis, and in 1966, I found myself in a single-sex college on the edges of Philadelphia, and it was like being in a convent. Of course, you wanted to meet guys. But the way you met guys was somebody fixed you up, or you went to these horrible - like a dance, what they called smokers.
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J MARGOLIS: They would take us in a bus up to, like, Lafayette College or Lehigh. These guys would be just lining up. I mean, it was just like a cattle show. It was just like a meat market. But this is what you did. If you didn't do that, what were you going to do?
JEFF TARR: My name is Jeff Tarr, and I was one of the co-founders of Operation Match, which was the first computer dating service in 1965. We had the idea mainly because we were so unsuccessful with dating. I went to Harvard, and I had some math ability, and I got a job in the summer working for the National Bureau of Casualty Underwriters, and they had these computers.
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: It's fast. It's powerful. It's versatile. The all-new IBM 1401 data processing system.
J TARR: So we thought, well, you get a computer to find someone that is interested in exactly the same things that you're interested in. We made up a questionnaire. We charged $3, and we sent them out. My main goal was to meet women.
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SHELLY BEASER: My name is Shelly Beaser.
MARTY MARGOLIS: My name is Marty Margolis.
LARRY BEASER: My name is Larry Beaser.
PATSY TARR: I'm Patsy Tarr. And in 1966, I was a freshman in college.
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S BEASER: This is the questionnaire. The first part, asked your gender, your race.
M MARGOLIS: Do you have strong religious convictions? Do you believe in a god who answers prayer?
J MARGOLIS: Interests - folk music, rock 'n' roll or popular music.
S BEASER: Do you consider yourself sexually experienced? Is extensive sexual activity preparation for marriage? I was so embarrassed by that. One of the guys called, and he wanted to know how I answered that question. I didn't go out with him.
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M MARGOLIS: Members of the opposite sex consider me to be beautiful or handsome, attractive, average or unattractive.
P TARR: I think I probably lied. I mean, I wanted to tell the truth because I wanted to be loved for myself. On the other hand, I wasn't that dumb. I wanted to get a good date.
L BEASER: So I filled it in. I wrote up my check for $3, folded it up and I sent it in to Cambridge.
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J TARR: That first time we did it, we probably gave out 30,000 questionnaires, and probably a third of them came back with $3. We'd get the information keypunched, and then they were put in the IBM machine. And we matched people up.
M MARGOLIS: I remember getting back an 8 1/2-by-11 page printed on a computer printer. It had, I think, six names and phone numbers on them.
L BEASER: And because you had an introduction through the computer, I was much less nervous in calling somebody. The computer said you were compatible. Let's find out.
S BEASER: I took notes. When Larry called, I put excellent. I could tell I liked him, so I put the heart next to his name. Next to another one, very doubtful. Another one, excellent. The ones that had excellent, I went out with.
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: If you would like to take the blindness out of your next blind date, one of these young men could help you.
J TARR: They put me on "The Today Show," "The Tonight Show." I went on a game show called "To Tell The Truth." And so I became famous for a couple of minutes.
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: Jeff, let me ask you something. Do you plan to go right along with this after you graduate from college?
J TARR: Yes, sir, I do.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: Make - it's grown that far so that you can make it a business?
J TARR: It's gone very well. It's across the country, and we have offices in Chicago and Boston, New York.
In the second year, we had, say, 200,000 applicants. And I didn't go to any classes my senior year.
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: We need our next team of challengers.
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J TARR: The third year, we printed these things up, and we sent them out, and most people didn't want to do it again. It was really like the Hula-Hoop. Everyone was excited about doing it for a year or two, but then they realized it didn't really work.
P TARR: I met a lot of young men. They also had lied. Gorgeous, tall, muscular (laughter) - then a little nebbish guy would show up (laughter). I never clicked with any of them. Honestly, it was a terrible way to meet people.
J TARR: The concept made sense, but there was no pictures. And also from the time you filled out your questionnaire to the time you got the answers, it was probably six weeks. As you know, these days, you can fill out the stuff in the afternoon and have a date for that night. So it was a lot of fun, and I'm surprised how many ended up getting married because they liked each other.
M MARGOLIS: So I graduated, and the Operation Match envelope with the names in them found its way into a box somewhere and reappeared when I moved. And that's when I decided, well, here's one I haven't tried yet. So why don't I try to get in contact with Jo?
J MARGOLIS: He wrote to me a letter.
M MARGOLIS: We agreed we would get together, and it...
J MARGOLIS: I remember you walking in the door. Yeah, I can remember the first time I saw you.
M MARGOLIS: You know, we've been married for 57 or 58 - yeah, 58 years. That's a long time. So do I think that Operation Match really measured what's essential about getting together? I doubt it. I don't know. What do you think?
J MARGOLIS: I mean, I'm just glad that it happened.
CHANG: Even though it was short-lived, Operation Match led to a number of marriages, including Jo and Marty Margolis and Larry and Shelly Beaser, whose voices we just heard. This story was produced by Alissa Escarce and edited by Ben Shapiro of Radio Diaries. You can hear more stories on the Radio Diaries podcast. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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