Within the age of algorithms, one Irish city nonetheless does love the old school method

LISDOONVARNA, Eire — Years in the past, whereas touring with my household alongside Eire’s west coast, I noticed a curious billboard. It was blue and sizzling pink, and confirmed a person with shoulder-length hair and a grey beard smiling out from the roadside.

It was for a matchmaking pageant — Europe’s largest, our tour information assured us. The person within the photograph was Willie Daly, the city’s resident matchmaker.

“Maybe any singles here can head to Lisdoonvarna next September to find your one true Irish love!” he declared as we drove previous, incomes the boring chuckle for a line he had clearly delivered numerous occasions earlier than.

That was 15 years in the past. Since then, courting has moved to apps and algorithms, to swipes and screens. However this September, I turned off the highway and into the city itself to see what endures — and what has light.

Lisdoonvarna, a village of fewer than 1,000 folks, sits not removed from the Cliffs of Moher, the place the land falls into the Atlantic as if the world itself ends there. A single avenue, a scatter of pubs — and, for one month every year, a metamorphosis because it turns into house to Europe’s final nice matchmaking pageant.

The custom stretches again greater than 150 years, when farmers got here after the harvest to seek out wives. At present, 1000’s nonetheless descend. Some are chasing romance, others simply the music and the jive. However beneath all of it is one thing uncommon: an nearly old school earnestness. Individuals nonetheless come right here to look each other within the eye.

At a crowded lodge bar, three ladies from County Kerry sit watching {couples} dance the Irish jive, an upbeat {couples} dance that resembles the Lindy Hop. Geraldine Beirne, Marie Walsh and Nora O’Sullivan say they have been coming since their 20s. Now of their 60s, they nonetheless return every year. No, not for males, they insist, however for the laughter, the music — and the corporate. That is to not say they have not seen romance right here earlier than.

“My sister met her husband here. My best friend met her husband here. I did meet somebody that was in my life for a while here,” says Walsh.

Again then, they even keep in mind busloads of People rolling into city. That does not occur anymore. “Since COVID, Lisdoonvarna’s had a big drop,” Beirne says. “The atmosphere, the whole scene changed. It has got quieter. But like that, when you’re good friends, you come out and you have a ball anyway.”

The three sound wistful. But throughout city, exterior one other bar, a youthful crowd has gathered.

“I’m looking to find true love,” says 30-year-old Fearghal O’Sullivan, cradling a pint of beer in hand. He means it.

“You have no real connection with Tinder, you know?” provides his pal Liam Shivers. “I want to look a woman in her eyes when I first meet her. I really believe in love at first sight.”

Shivers pauses, laughs at himself. “I thought I had it once, but she said no. She said, ‘Stop looking at me.'”

Later, extra mates will be part of them for Lisdoonvarna’s massive Saturday blowout.

By night, the Matchmaker Bar is nearly at capability. There’s reside music, dancing, and within the nook, the star attraction — Willie Daly, the matchmaker himself.

He arrives to discover a crowd already ready for him. An outdated pal desires solely to shake his hand. Three younger ladies sit anxiously, one having dragged mates from Spain and Dublin in hopes of discovering boyfriends. “I’m sick of them complaining,” she says.

Daly thinks he is in his early 80s, although he is not positive (the city physician wasn’t a lot with information).

He units up his sales space in an alcove on the entrance of the bar. As soon as it had a door, however he took it off. “It was too private,” he says. “Took too long to listen to everyone’s story.”

Now, he tapes up indicators that say issues like “Love Won’t Wait” and spreads out his questionnaires. “What are your interests?” “What are your personal preferences for a partner?” Later, he’ll undergo folks’s responses and begin making matches.

However first, he pulls out his most prized possession: a hundred-year-old ledger, handed down via three generations, certain in tape and rubber bands like some tattered spellbook.

“You don’t count the seconds,” he says, explaining the guide’s magic. “You just touch the book. You think about happiness and love. Close your eyes and think about being happy and in love, and you’ll be in love and married inside the six Irish months.” Which, he admits, might imply something from six days to 6 years.

Over the a long time, Daly says he is matched some 3,000 {couples}. “That never seemed many,” he shrugs.

His system of charges is equally obscure. Typically 3 euros, typically 40, most frequently 5 ($5.86). “Five euros for a husband!” he shouts, laughing.

One after the other, folks sit with him. He listens, nods, then scribbles a phrase or two throughout their kind: “Gorgeous.” “Intelligent.” As soon as, “Pamela Anderson.”

It’s matchmaking, sure — but additionally ritual, theater, even confession. For a lot of, simply being heard is sufficient.

Not everybody who sits with him is single. Laura Ryan, 37, has been with a accomplice for 15 years however by no means married. “I really only want a blessing,” she tells him. His recommendation? “Tell him you got a lot of offers.”

Daly admits his personal marriage didn’t final. “I better touch wood,” he says. “You should never count what you have. They say you should never count your sheep, count your cows, count your pigs, count your money or count your wives.” Nonetheless, he beams when speaking about his 20 grandchildren. His father launched him to his spouse, he says proudly.

Now, his granddaughter, 25-year-old Oonagh Tighe, is able to carry the work on.

“First thing we say is, ‘Are you single?’ ‘Would you like a woman,’ ‘Would you like a man?’ ” she says. Tighe has already organized her share of matches, together with Patrick Mead and Angela Heavey, who met right here two years in the past. “She asked for our star signs,” Mead recollects. “She looked it up and said, you’re compatible. You’re a match.” They’re nonetheless collectively, celebrating their anniversary on the pageant.

Others journey a lot farther. Denise Almas, from Vancouver, Wash., flew in after stumbling throughout the pageant on-line. “I got off dating apps three years ago. Never again,” she says. “This is more normal. You’re live, in person. And we need more of this. We need more community in the U.S.”

Almas isn’t alone in that frustration. A 2025 Forbes Well being ballot discovered that 78% of courting app customers within the U.S. reported frustration with them, citing ghosting, superficiality and a scarcity of actual connection.

“Community is our culture,” says Melissa Condon, a farmer from Tipperary attending the pageant along with her husband. “It’s about meeting people, talking, telling stories.”

By midnight, the get together has shifted to the Ritz Lodge.

Two dance flooring are going without delay. There is a DJ on one aspect, a reside band enjoying conventional Irish music on the opposite. Younger and outdated, swirling collectively within the blur of all of it. Not everybody — not even most — have discovered love. However the pleasure is within the gathering, and the earnest perception that they only would possibly.

After which, simply earlier than the lights come up, Geraldine Beirne, one of many Kerry ladies who thought the pageant’s finest days have been lengthy gone, finds me within the crowd.

Seventeen years a widow, she is beaming. She says she simply met a person.

“A gentleman,” she says, smiling. “With amazing blue eyes.”

Perhaps, in spite of everything, it is solely the start.