As Valentines Day rolls around, people often contend that “love is in the air.”
For Linda Miller, love is in the air all year long. For Miller, it began almost 17 years ago living on a farm in rural Manitoba.
At the time, she’d matched up most of her friends in university and college and even some of her mother’s friends.
“I had a knack for it,” she says. She added one of the issues in rural communities is that it can be difficult connecting with other people.
Then one night, she had a dream of doing it as a business. Upon telling her sister, Miller was encouraged to make that dream a reality.
The result was Camelot Introductions.
A few years later, she sold the business when her now ex-husband was transferred to Ottawa. It was at this time Miller started up Misty River Introductions – and she hasn’t looked back since.
Miller places ads in community papers serving rural areas, but still travels in person to meet those clients face to face.
As a result, she is frequently in Wellington County, though the meetings generally happen within the larger communities. She estimated she’s in the area every two to three weeks and remains here for a few days each time while talking to her clients.
She believes her natural intuitive knack for matching people, using traditional methods and carefully agreed upon criteria have resulted in thousands of happy couples and countless marriages.
Miller added that between Jan. 1 and Valentine’s Day is one of her busier times of the year, but better weather also has an impact on who gets in touch.
While weather doesn’t impact as much on those in their 20s to 40s, it does affect the number of older clients. That said, Miller feels the client base is busy enough throughout the year to keep her eight staff occupied.
Miller said there are funny little things that seem to happen each week. She noted one elderly woman in her 70s had commented that “John” had come over for lunch.
Miller said such meetings are against the rules until everything is finalized. Apparently, John had been over for lunch every day that week.
Miller said female clients call the gentlemen when both parties have agreed to meet.
This allows the woman to give out her phone number as and when she sees fit, after having met with the gentleman.
“But, there’s a huge culture shock, especially for people who’ve been married 20 or 30 years,” Miller said.
People have become unfamiliar with meeting others and often wonder if the rules have changed,
“So our job is as much coaching as it is match making,” she said.
For a time, she couldn’t understand why people would be nervous meeting other people – “it’s just a conversation,” she’d say.
And then things changed, as she became single once more.
“I remember my first blind date and knocking over a glass of water … I was that nervous,” she said.
It’s helped her empathize with her clients. She discovered, “Yes, it is a big deal.”
Miller added some people had seen her ads for years before getting in touch.
“They needed to get to a certain point mentally, to reach out,” she noted.
The $1,250 fee provides 12 meetings with 12 different individuals, though Miller says most matches happen after three face-to-face meetings.
Miller states the people who join Misty River Introductions are generally not people who have trouble getting dates.
“Our clients lead busy, hectic lives, juggling careers, personal lives and sometimes children,” she said.
Clients may not feel comfortable meeting people in bars or clubs and turn to Miller’s service for personal, professional match making with people who meet their individual criteria.
She added clients include people from all walks of life – single never married, divorced and widowed. They range in age from 18 to 85.
Misty River Introductions was created with the name derived from the view of the Mississippi River flowing by Miller’s home in Carleton Place.
For more information check out the Misty River Introductions website at www.mistyriverintros.com.
