Page 2 / News, Trends, Gossip and Stuff To Do : Web Watch : Wanted: A Wife (Will Pay $10,000)

It’s sort of a low-budget version of “Indecent Proposal,” the movie in which Robert Redford offers $1 million for a night with Demi Moore.

Rod Barnett is anteing up 1% of that sum--but asking for a lifetime commitment. Toward that end, he has created a Web site--https://www.10k4awife.com--promising $10,000 to anyone who introduces him to his future spouse.

“No, there is nothing wrong with me, and I can assure you that I am not desperate,” he says. “I just believe that the primary reason people can’t find a compatible partner is a simple lack of exposure.”

Visibility is no longer a problem. Since launching his Web site last year, the 35-year-old Missouri resident has been interviewed by scores of radio stations, newspapers and TV shows in the U.S. and abroad. And he’s been inundated with thousands of potential matches--including ones from prison inmates, kids e-mailing about their single moms, gay men hoping he might abandon women and even a few husbands willing to “rent out” their wives.

Yet nothing has clicked. Only one reply led to a serious relationship, he says, and it ended after two months.

Barnett admits he is choosy. He specifies that his e-mail-order bride be “a very attractive brunet or blond,” 24 to 35 years old, who doesn’t smoke and is confident, nonjudgmental, 5-foot-4 to 6 feet tall and 110 to 140 pounds. “Please respect the fact that I know what type of build I’m attracted to and wish it was not so restricted,” he explains on his Web site. “I did not make that perception, it’s just what came about within me.”

Barnett describes himself as “very deep and profound,” and says his favorite activities include travel, karaoke, “exploring intimacies with my lover,” environmental preservation, movies and gourmet cooking. He’s also into Nostradamus, alternative medicine and UFOs.

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Residing in St. Louis, he owns a company that distributes industrial equipment, but he says he wants to move to California, Arizona or another warm state, “so don’t think just because I live in Missouri, we can’t meet.”

Not everyone appreciates this bounty-hunter approach to dating. One Web site named him Moron of the Month in November 1998. But Barnett is unfazed. “I have a high degree of confidence that allows me to be unconcerned that many people may find this highly unusual,” he says.

And he’s so sure the tactic will work that his Web site asks visitors to send him copies of any newspaper articles he might have missed because, “I’m very sentimental and want to show this to my children someday and say, ‘That’s how I met Mommy.’ ”

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Rod Barnett’s Web address is https://www. 10k4awife.com. His voicemail is (314) 995-4605.