‘This is a very basic level of changing the world that I’m working on’

Every day is Valentine’s Day for Andrea Brae. In a season devoted to tinsel and bows, Brae has her office decorated with hearts and cherubs. The thirtysomething native of Ohio is a professional matchmaker and founder of Soulmates in La Jolla. Brae, a former reporter for the Cincinnati Post, started her matchmaking career in San Diego 10 years ago by publishing a dating magazine for senior citizens. Seeing the need for hands-on matchmaking, Brae started Soulmates. Now, she boasts a client list of 1,500 men and women, and says about 75% of the singles who come to her end up walking down the aisle. Times staff writer Caroline Lemke interviewed Brae at Soulmates in La Jolla Village Square, and Bruce K. Huff photographed her.

When I moved out here, I wanted to do something that would make a contribution, so I started publishing “Sweet and Sexy Seniors.” After about four years of publishing this magazine, I realized if I was going to be a philanthropist and really change the world, I needed to take better care of myself.

So I stopped everything I was doing and for a month really thought about what I wanted to do. I decided my seniors weren’t totally pleased with personal ads because it’s a real shotgun approach to finding a partner, so I became a matchmaker for them, and I had outrageous success. I had lots of people getting married.

I’m an Aquarian, and I’ve got this real sense of responsibility about the world. I’m here to make the world a better place. My moon is in Libra, which means I’m very interested in partnerships and romance.

I have a great deal of compassion for people. I cry frequently in interviews when people tell me about their lives.

I’m very romantic and deeply need myself to be in a love relationship for my own grounding, so that gives me a great deal of sympathy for people who are not.

This is not about getting dates for people. What we do at Soulmates is personal, professional matchmaking, which is very different from a dating service.

Dating services for the most part are involved with computers and video and photographs so, once the client is enrolled, there’s no real personal service.

The first thing I do is handpick two people based on all the criteria they give me. I go through hundreds of client files and I pull out a file I think is the most appropriate match.

I don’t think there is any substitute for the intuitive knowing of people, and I have personally interviewed all of our clients so I have a million percent sense of the client.

It’s like a little light goes off in my head. At night, I’ll be in bed and I’ll be thinking about a client and I’ll get a sense, “Oh my goodness, this is going to be exciting! I’ve got to introduce these two people.”

We want to take these people who are committed and who want to find their soulmate and who are expedient and intentional about that and take that innocence and enthusiasm and reward that as quickly as possible rather than have them run around the mulberry bush.

The problem with meeting people on your own is that you know nothing about that individual, and then you get into a relationship and find out certain things that, if you knew up front, you would never have gotten involved.

I save people years of running around the mulberry bush.

My vision is the most important thing. There was a time when I had $10 a week for food money, when the phone was about to be disconnected, and I couldn’t afford to pay my printing costs.

But I really believe in myself, despite anything else to the external that says, “You can’t make it. You can’t do this.”

The world needs professional matchmakers. We’d have fewer divorces, happier marriages, happy children and a happier society.

This is a very basic level of changing the world that I’m working on, but I know it makes a difference.