LISTENERS TALK ABOUT THEIR DATES

KIEV “Date Night” host Susan Block supplied the names and phone numbers of a fistful of callers who told her they would be willing to talk with a reporter for attribution. What follows is a brief report from three of them.

Terry Swart is 32 and a never-married biomedical researcher who lives in Alhambra. She is blond, a mite overweight, sweet-faced. She said she first heard the program in April, “thought the callers sounded pretty interesting” and decided to call in “because I was not meeting people through normal channels.” She said she described what she “liked to do and the kind of man I wanted to meet.”

The “original batch” of letters she received numbered a half-dozen. She screened out all but two of the writers. “They were nice but nothing happened.”

Among the writers she screened out, she said, was “a guy who wrote three or four pages on flowered paper. I thought, ‘Oh, oh,’ when I saw the paper. And then he began stating his sexual preferences.”

She continued to telephone “Date Night” and for the last three months she has been the steady companion of a 40-year-old librarian whose letter to her, she thought, indicated he “had a sense of humor.” It turned out he did have a sense of humor and that “he also was good-looking,” she said. They date two or three times a week but, she said, at this point “neither of us see it as permanent.”

Ann Temple works as an office receptionist and weekend hairdresser and is a dedicated body builder. In one of the many personals she has placed with Block, she told male listeners, in a breathy voice:

“Who are you? Where are you? I’ve been waiting all my life to meet you. I’m 29, very attractive. Every time I pump iron at the gym I picture you in front of me. You look just as good as I do. You fascinate me, the same way I fascinate myself as I look in the mirror each day. I’m waiting for you. I’m exciting. I’m a redhead.”

In person, she is indeed red-haired and a double divorcee with a slinky persona. She said her first “Date Night” commercial a year ago drew 70 responses from men, “some of which I rejected as being in bad taste. But none of the guys propositioned me. That surprised me. It told me people really do want to meet people, the lonely and the divorced.” She added:

“I’ve dated 60 men through the show. I’m very adventurous. Most of the time I go (to a first meeting) directly after a workout in my gym clothes. I’m not there to impress someone. I’m there to meet someone.”

Five of her meetings, she said, resulted in extended relationships, one of which involved a Simi Valley physician and lasted three months. Before calling Block, she said, “I always had more dates than I could handle. But this is a different way of projecting yourself. I want to meet someone as special as I think I am.

“I would like to meet someone and wind up married. Start up my life and have children. I have too much to offer to stay single.”

She has experienced a few disappointments. “One was a big fat man I couldn’t even recognize from the description he gave of himself,” she said. “When something like that happens, I just say, ‘I’m really sorry. But I think we’ve made a boo-boo.’ ”

Bob Maine is 38 and a bachelor, lives in Pasadena and does special effects and cartoon photography. He is a solidly built, pleasant-featured man with thinning reddish-brown hair. He is a longtime KIEV listener and talk-show fan. “When you’re shooting cartoons,” he said, “there’s nothing much else to do but listen to the radio.”

He caught a promotion for the Block show broadcast on the station, listened to a program, got hooked and has been a frequent caller since. “It’s so hard to meet people in the kind of work I do,” he said. “Interesting work but you don’t meet people. You meet computers and other cameramen.”

In his search for a companion, Maine said, he has dated several women who, he added, “mostly are interested in fun and games. So far no one wants to get really serious. There’s been nothing unattractive about any of them. But we’re not coming from the same point. Most were only interested in sex. That’s not really bad. But I knew the relationship would not go anywhere.

“Supposedly men are the ones wanting to avoid commitment. But I’ve found all women today basically want to stay single. They don’t want to get involved. I want to get out of that syndrome. I want to get married.

“One woman I met through the show seemed to be really serious. She was only 30. But she had five kids. That was a little overwhelming for me, a little more than I bargained for.”

In a letter the woman wrote him and during a subsequent phone call, after hearing him on “Date Night,” Maine said, “she never mentioned her kids. I don’t think she was deceiving me. I think it was a situation of omission. But I was kind of surprised.

“It was interesting. I arranged to meet her in a coffee shop. And when I arrived, I’m looking around and, suddenly, there she is and there are all these little people around.”