Both Ryan, 35, and Lauren, 36, were ready for commitment and they were fatigued with the dating app experience. Lauren, a user experience designer and animation producer, was encouraged to get on a matchmaking site by her twin sister. “I didn’t even know about matchmaking. I have an identical twin sister; she was married and she kept saying, ‘You should try matchmaking’,” Lauren explains. “I was like I’m not really familiar with this besides knowing that other cultures do it. I got online and that’s how I found Tawkify. After signing up, I loved it.
Tawkify, a personalized matchmaking service that’s been bringing singles together for over 10 years. There are multiple pathways to sign up for Tawkify; Lauren decided to sign up to work with her own Tawkify matchmaker. She told Black Love that the service was “a beautiful experience,” in part it is “so much easier” than “swiping through the apps.”
Lauren was matched with matchmaker Lillian who she says she had “a lot in common” with. Lauren gushes that she has filled with “fun anticipation” about her matches, explaining that she and Lillian developed a “girlfriend dynamic and dialogue.”
“She puts you on dates and you’re like ‘Oh this is what I liked about him and this is what I didn’t like.’ I just love it.”
Ryan, meanwhile, was looking for a more focused approach to dating. A project manager, Ryan felt that matchmaking would be a better fit because “someone else can give a recommendation to me” as opposed to “swiping on the apps.”
“Even though we grew up in similar neighborhoods and similar social circles, we still needed a matchmaker to get us into the right place at the right time,” Ryan said about his romance with Lauren.
Ryan paid a fee to be put in the pool of candidates that Tawkify pulls from to match their clients. He went through a similar intake process as Lauren to be accepted into the pool. He would then get a call every couple of weeks where different matchmakers would describe their client and Ryan would have the chance to agree to the date or not.
It’s also worth mentioning that neither party sees what the other looks like. They only get details on the person and if both agree, the matchmaker sets the pair up on a blind date. Ryan appreciated the laid-back process of being in the pool of candidates.
“It was nice to let that be happening in the background and I can focus on some other things. It was a great experience for me.”
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Lauren managed to find Ryan by her second match. Tawkify matchmakers typically have their clients going on one date a month. Ryan and Lauren met in September 2022, during Lauren’s second month of using the service, and felt an immediate connection. Their first date lasted four hours, but before the date even really began, Lauren realized that she recognized Ryan.
“When he walked up, I was like, ‘Do I know you?’” Lauren explains. “Then he goes, ‘Oh yeah didn’t you go to the University of Michigan?’ It took matchmaking for us to meet. Crossing paths with him at Michigan, I didn’t see him again until years later [on the date] even though we know the same people and live 10 minutes away from each other.”
The couple has previously seen each other at a student organization event at the University of Michigan 12 years before this first date. Lauren was getting ready to graduate while Ryan was just starting his second bachelor’s degree (he attended Morehouse College prior) so they overlapped for a semester.
“We were Facebook friends,” Ryan said. “I remember adding her on Facebook. It’s one of those things where you might meet someone in one context and it’s not the right timing.”
As the couple began thinking about just how serendipitous their meeting was years later, Ryan began to believe that “there’s gotta be some kind of divine timing or something because things happened quickly. But when you know you know.”
These two knew they were supposed to be together. Lauren says that she knew Ryan was “the one” about a month after they met. It was Ryan’s birthday; he booked a hotel “somewhere nice” and planned a couples massages,” according to Lauren.
“We just had a lovely time, almost to the point where I felt like it was my birthday. I never felt like that – having a man just be very intentional and kind of take the reins and plan things,” Lauren explains. “I’m like, ‘I really like this.’ I can just kind of relax and enjoy the process. I felt really nice. I was like, ‘I think I really like this guy.’ That’s when I really felt like, ‘Okay, Lillian, we don’t have to keep going.’ That’s when I knew.”
Ryan knew Lauren was the one for him when she planned a night for them to go back to the University of Michigan for a game night event. The two were on opposite sides of the room and were socializing with other people throughout the night.
“At the end of the night one of the questions was ‘What is the key to life?’” Ryan shares. “They asked everyone to go around the room and show what they wrote down. And so, completely independently of each other, Lauren writes growth on her piece of paper. I [also] write growth on my piece of paper and I’m like, ‘Oh wow, this lightbulb is going off.’ We share that same core values and we can build a relationship around that.”
Ryan proposed in October 2023, 11 months after they met. The couple married on March 17, 2024, with Lauren’s matchmaker, Lillian, in attendance. In the end, these two were just meant to be. It was a mix of divine timing, years of Tawkify dating data, and the human touch of matchmaking that got these two to the right place at the right time.
Congrats to the beautiful couple!
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