Cupid's Tune: 'Buy, Buy Love' : Relationships: For those too busy for an old-fashioned courtship, high-powered dating services take the time and worry out of meeting and mating.

By JUSTINE KAPLAN

Nov. 20, 1992 12 AM PT

SPECIAL TO THE TIMES

Here is the equation: An already-sour California economy plunges further into recession, creating anxiety and longer work hours for those still fortunate enough to be among the ranks of the employed.

Add that to 10.3 million unmarried residents. Then multiply it by the AIDS scare.

The result is a booming business for Cupids, who charge from $1,000 to $50,000 to advertise, rifle through files or hunt down prospective mates for singles who believe the elixir to these troubled times is pre-screened conjugal bliss.

“I’m swamped right now,” says Christine O’Keefe, founder of one of the first upscale marriage brokerage businesses in Southern California and the author of “How to Successfully Flirt, Date and Mate!”

“As other people’s businesses slow down during this recession, they have more time to think about what’s missing in their lives. People I haven’t seen in two years are calling to tell me they are at a crossroads, that when things get busy again, they don’t want to be trapped without a mate.

“Quality people are scarce,” says the former manager of the Chicago branch of the Southern California-based video dating service Great Expectations. “If they want to go bimbo-hunting, I send them to the pier.”

That scarcity of corps d’elite catches is exactly what sent 39-year-old Newport Beach interior designer Christina Parker to O’Keefe.

Parker, who just moved the international company she owns to the Los Angeles area and often finds herself flying to Paris and Rome to meet clients, signed with O’Keefe two years ago after meeting her in a photographer’s dressing room.

Although she had already paid another matchmaker $20,000 to find her a mate, it was O’Keefe who introduced her to a film producer and heart surgeon who were more suited to what she was seeking.

“I was a child of the ‘60s,” Parker says. “I’ve spent years working on a sense of accomplishment and self-esteem, and marriage was never an issue for me.” Now that she’s reached the pinnacle of success, she says, she’s ready to settle down and is banking on O’Keefe to help her.

“I’m very exclusive about the people I’ll do business with,” says O’Keefe, who charges a $5,000 retainer for her services, receiving bonuses upward of $20,000 if the match is successful. “I screen them carefully, go to high teas, fashion shows, charity events, even to Europe and across the U.S. to find mates for them.”

This month, O’Keefe has offered a $5,000 reward in Los Angeles magazine and the Beverly Hills Courier for anyone who leads her to a successful match for four of her clients, including the wealthy president of an Anaheim health care company who hopes O’Keefe will help him find Ms. Right.

“I’ve reached a place in my life where I’m ready to get married again,” says the divorced, 45-year-old father of one, who prefers to remain anonymous. “A sense of mortality is setting in, and I’m more than willing to offer a reward to anyone who can help me with my search. After all,” he says from his car phone as he speeds down the coast, “I’m past the point of extended puberty.”

With the 1990 Census reporting an all-time high of unmarried adults, there is no longer a stigma attached to being single, says Brian Popko Sr., a former psychology professor from New York and founder of the Orange-based video dating service Connections, which claims more than 30,000 clients from offices in Florida, San Diego and Marina del Rey.

“When I started doing this in 1978, I saw there was a business in taking advantage of lonely people who didn’t have options,” he says. “That is not the case anymore for a number of reasons, the AIDS scare included. People are just more careful now. They don’t want to run around, don’t want to settle. They want to get married. Almost everyone who comes through these doors says that is what they’re hoping for.”

He sifts through some files and begins to throw head shots and vital statistic sheets onto the desk in his spacious conference room. “You look at some of these people and think, ‘What would they be doing in a dating service?’ They’re gorgeous, intelligent, successful--but they haven’t been able to meet the right people. People are looking for a value-for-value exchange, for security, lifestyle; they have huge expectations. Happiness only comes when those expectations are met or exceeded.”

Connections’ annual $1,200 fee entitles clients to choose and reject prospective partners from a large video library without ever meeting them, a service similar to that offered by the even larger Great Expectations. But for a high price tag, the more exclusive Platinum Club membership is available to those who want Popko to conduct a nationwide search, off-camera and in person.

Recently, Popko says, he was approached by a representative of a high-profile Irvine company on behalf of a young executive the organization hoped would soon reach high corporate ranks. “He is well-educated, handsome, by anyone’s stretch a fabulous catch. The problem is he was single and running around, and they want to see him married before putting him into a top position,” Popko says. “He cannot afford to take the time to look himself, so they are willing to sponsor a search.” The cost so far: $30,000. The outcome: No marriage yet.

Men’s mental health studies suggest that it is good business for companies to have their executives happily married. Sociologists and demographers alike say marriage has a salutary effect on the male psyche.

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Susan Faludi claims in her 1991 book “Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women” that single men far outnumber women in dating services, matchmaking clubs and the personals columns and that it is “common practice for dating services to admit single women at reduced rates, even free, in hopes of remedying the imbalance.”

According to Faludi, a former Wall Street Journal reporter whose groundbreaking statistics defy the man-shortage myth, the data chronicled in dozens of studies over the years show that the suicide rate of single men is twice as high as that of married men and that single men are far more likely to suffer from nervous breakdowns and depression than those who are married.

A Laguna Niguel man, who also didn’t want his name used, agrees with the assessment. The 45-year-old entrepreneur moved to Orange County from the Boston area a year ago to open a West Coast plant for his own manufacturing company and realized he didn’t know a soul. The recently divorced father of two grown children had just returned from a trip to Europe that was “wonderful but really empty because I had no one to share it with,” when he met former Israeli beauty queen Orly Hadida in a Newport Beach club.

Another matchmaker who caters to an upper-income clientele in Orange County and Los Angeles, Hadida--whose claim to fame is a 1989 match she made on the air between one of her male clients and a producer of “A.M. Los Angeles”--managed to interest the Laguna Niguel man in her spouse-hunting service. A few weeks later, he wrote her a check for $10,000, which entitled him to a year of introductions to women who met his very specific qualifications.

“The singles scene can be a very frustrating,” he says. “It’s difficult to meet quality women. The kind of women I’m looking for are not in a nightclub. Having just moved here, I’m at a disadvantage. I’m very busy; I don’t have time to work at this the way a lot of other people may. Orly provides an intermediary, screens people for me. I consider it a worthwhile investment.”

Moments after hanging up the phone, he dials back this reporter. “You don’t by any chance know anyone who meets my specifications, preferably blond, under 5-foot-6, do you?”

Two years ago, Dana Point resident Steve Saleson, 43, saw an article in a legal newspaper that praised the services of yet another marriage broker, Patricia Moore, who has been running a matchmaking service with offices in Newport Beach, Los Angeles, San Diego, Sacramento and San Francisco since 1984.

Saleson, who says he’s looking for a serious relationship that will lead to marriage, paid a “substantial amount of money” to Moore because he doesn’t have the time to meet the quality women he’d like to. “I do litigation work and can’t date clients, don’t go to bars, can’t make advances to colleagues and am not going to inquire about someone’s attractive secretary.”

So what ever happened to the girl next door?

“Who knows the girl next door in California?” says Moore, who is the president of the International Society of Introduction Services, an umbrella group that keeps track of who is introducing who to whom and how. “There’s no normal way to meet people anymore. The girl next door has moved away. Someone else has moved in.”