Marriages made in Maryland

The matchmaking racket:
Tommy Curtis at work

The Bethesda Yacht Club's Tommy Curtis claims that 116 couples have come into his sights. Click here for a little gallery -- six scenes of a Cupid with his trophies.

February 14, 2001
Web posted at: 1:18 p.m. EST (1818 GMT)

In this story: Birds of a feather Getting a 'feeling' RELATED STORIES, SITES

By Stephanie M. Cooke
CNN Headline News Associate Writer
and
Porter Anderson
CNN.com/Career Editor

(CNN) -- Whether you're single and looking, or married and "just looking," you may be longing for a little romance on St. Valentine's Day. After all that's what it's there for -- or so the florists tell us -- to make us stop and pay homage to Cupid (in Rome) or Eros (in Athens), the god of love whose career is said to be centered on lurking around, eyes peeled, arrow drawn, ready to make love "happen."

In the films, boy meets girl, boy marries girl, boy and girl live happily ever after. Of course, in some films boy meets boy or girl meets girl -- happily ever after is frequently the message, nevertheless. A lot of the entertainment industry is bent on telling us that this love business is the only way to go.

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	OK, it's the vocation-and-naked-babies question. Do you think Valentines get along best when they: Work together. Right together. Same job, same office, same everything. Work in the same industry but not in the same job. A nurse and a doctor, for example. Work in the same industry and even the same job but not in the same place. Two surgeons, for example, in residence at two different hospitals. Work in completely independent fields. View Results

Here's the way it happens if you go to the Yacht Club in Bethesda, Maryland: Boy sees girl; girl sees boy. Tommy Curtis sees the boy seeing the girl and introduces them. The rest goes pretty much as it does in the movies. At least, that's the screenplay for the 116 couples Curtis says have fallen prey to his modern matchmaking efforts.

Birds of a feather

A timely report from the Employment Policy Foundation (EPF) -- a non-profit, non-partisan operation in Washington -- tells us that, in fact, more than 4 million couples are celebrating Valentine's Day 2001 as colleagues in one industry or another.

Dual-income married couples, the EPF's data indicates -- now form the most commonly occurring household unit in the United States. The foundation's survey data puts the number at 31 million dual-income homes or some 39 percent of all working households.

It seems safe to assume that whatever magic Curtis is working at the yacht club, it's a lot more about coupling than retiring.

Of that large group of dual-earner homes, the EPF cites 4.3 million, or 14 percent of all working households, as comprising husbands and wives who work in the same industries -- and 6.4 percent in the same occupation.

Bethesda's Tommy Curtis chats up some potential match material -- and potential workplace colleagues

The EPF's Current Population Survey says schoolteachers are the most common two-by-two outfits on the career road right now. They're in elementary and secondary schoolrooms. (The EPF goes on to cite a "large propensity of workers in this industry to marry one another." The foundation does seem, at least at this time of year, to have some intriguing insight into the ways of the hearts of American working men and women.

Just over 40 percent, the EPF says, of dual-earner spouses working in the school systems are sharing lunch money with the Mr. or Mrs., the survey results suggest.

Restaurants and bars also seem to attract -- or create -- team players along these lines (this may say something about Curtis' success at the yacht club). Forty-one percent of dual-earner spouses in this group are married to folks in the same industry, per survey results.

And the EPF's officials say some other employee groups with lots of couples include hospital workers, agriculture and livestock workers, real-estate salespeople and farm workers.

MESSAGE BOARD
	As long as we're talking Valentines, talk Valentines with us.

How many spouses who work in the same industry also work in the very same occupation? The EPF says about one in 15 have the same jobs -- managers of restaurants and hotels, attorneys and judges are on this list.

So with those professionals tying the knot at such a rate, maybe it's not surprising that Curtis -- in the Washington area -- is doing such big business in the matchmaking department.

Getting a 'feeling'

Curtis might classify himself a kind of singles psychic -- he says he doesn't know what it is, he just has a sixth sense about people and what type of partners they may do well with in life.

And he says he never knows where or when the urge to do some mathing will strike him. It's happened, he says, not only at the yacht club, but also at a restaurant in Beverly Hills and at a grocery store.

Standing in the checkout line once, he says, he found a girl in front of him and a guy behind him. And he got that "feeling." He checked for wedding rings and then asked the guy if he'd ever had the starfruit the girl was about to buy. The fellow said he'd had the starfruit -- and he struck up a conversation about it.

Tommy Curtis greets guests at the Yacht Club in Bethesda, Maryland

Curtis paid for his groceries and headed for his car. As he was driving away, he checked his rearview mirror. The guy was helping the girl with her groceries.

Starfruit aside, the man does seem to have a knack for the hookup and he's worked it into a kind of cottage industry.

The yacht club is open four nights per week and operates largely by word-of-mouth - -or word-of-match. Curtis says his reputation is such that he has had some serious offers from people looking to find that special someone.

"I once had a guy look at me and say, 'Tommy, I'll give you $10,000 if you'll find me the woman of my dreams.' And he was dead serious," says Curtis. "But I had to turn him down. I don't do private matchmaking."

Curtis says he sees the Cupid act as a gift. He says he loves to make the matches, but that they have to happen of their own accord. He lays no claim to making the chemistry, he says he ust sees the potential and sets the course -- or fires that arrow.

This side of Curtis' work as owner and manager of the yacht club (yes, there is a part of this gig that has paid him for about a decade) might have some subtle roots in his background.

He has something of a Hollywood pedigree, as the grandson and great nephew, respectively, of the Cohn brothers -- Columbia Pictures heavies Jack (1889-1956) and Harry (1891-1958) Cohn.

Tommy Curtis

While at Yale, the host instinct asserted itself -- Curtis was his class social chairman and booked The Supremes for his junior prom. In the 1970s, he did local radio and television work, interviewing entertainers Steve Martin, Charleton Heston and others.

But in the middle of the '80s, Curtis says, he found himself single, professional and over 35 -- and without a ready spot to meet singles. And this, Net-head readers, was before the rise of the ether -- no online personals. Curtis says he found only bars and clubs drawing 18-to-30-year-olds looking for a night, not a lifetime.

So by the end of 1988, the land-locked Yacht Club was born. An upscale spot for mature match candidates, the facility draws Beltway pros and politicians to Curtis' showy style.

He starts the night, microphone in hand, working the line outside the club. Two couples from that sidewalk queue alone have been married, he says, the result of his deft introductions.

If they make it inside before the rice starts flying, patrons are likely to hear engagement announcements among other elements of the floor show.

"It's a real thrill for me," Curtis says, "when someone comes up and says, 'You introduced us and now we're getting married.'"

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Crowning careers: IT workers still rule
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Workplace gender gap: Women and men -- payday
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Uncoupled colleagues
November 1, 2000

Employment Policy Foundation

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