Five years of Date Lab: Who got hitched, who got ditched and what we’ve learned in our quest for a spark

SUCCESS! SUCCESS?

We’re often asked about our rate of success. But success isn’t easy to measure when it comes to relationships. Everyone’s looking for something different: true love, a new friend, a hook-up, a good story. We tend to declare mission accomplished if by the end of the night our couple want to see each other again. Tallying the dates with that definition in mind, we get roughly 104 out of 253: 41 percent.

 

Five years of Date Lab: Who got hitched, who got ditched and what we’ve learned in our quest for a spark - The Washington Post

 

Some readers, however, expect more — they want serious sparks, love at first sight, marriage proposals. For them, we’ll begin our Date Lab disquisition with the first of our couples to reach the altar: Chris Bradley and Chrissie Brodigan, whose 2006 matchup was one they might never have made themselves.

For Brodigan, attractive meant “tall, dark, handsome and a geek.” But she described her dream date as “a sexy chef,” so we tracked down a man with a gourmet resume. The one catch: On the tall and geeky requirements, he fell a little short.

We often gamble on a compromise such as this one (but then, so do all daters). For someone seeking a documentary-loving polyglot who makes magic in the kitchen, we might drum up a multi-lingual filmmaker. But if the only thing he knows about food is how to make reservations, will the match be dead on arrival? We like to find out.

In the case of Brodigan, a 29-year-old Web site designer, and Bradley, a 34-year-old chef, a little disconnect on paper didn’t dampen the chemistry in person. She loved everything from his vintage wingtips to his foodie talk. He was bowled over by her boundless energy. At the end of the evening, it was Brodigan who asked Bradley to kiss her (though he said he’d already planned to). Within a month, the two were inseparable — and engaged. Six months later, they eloped.

The thrill of the first Date Lab wedding didn’t last long — for them (more on that later) or for us. It would be a few more years before we could brag aboutanother lifelong commitment. After a host of dates, from the bland to the hopeful to the cringe-worthy, we hit the jackpot again with Megan McKnight and Grant Schafer.

Neither had signed up expecting to find The One. McKnight, now 30, had applied on a wine-induced lark after prodding from her sister and friends. Schafer, 28, had never been on a blind date.

“I was like, ‘You know, I have nothing to lose,’ ” he says. “I thought it would be funny.”

Schafer couldn’t find any good photos of himself but sent a few he had on hand. “I looked like a dork,” he says of the pictures he uploaded with his application.

He didn’t know it then, but geekiness was an asset. McKnight had listed her type as “adorkable,” a la Zach Braff. And Schafer, trim and earnest, has the blazing blue eyes and ready smile of the adorkable.

Stepping into Potenza that night in November 2009, McKnight spotted Schafer and “kind of got that excited heartbeat, like, ‘Oh, wow, he’s cute,’ ” she says. The two settled into a booth and almost immediately discovered common ground. She was a grad student studying library science; he was a Loudoun County public schools social worker. They both leaned liberal and wanted to travel the world. “I felt instantly comfortable with him,” McKnight says. They still joke about his attempt at a flirty toast: “To our adventurous spirit.”

Out with friends one evening that January, Schafer remembers gazing at McKnight across the table and musing, Wow, I think I could marry her. “She was just so great. And I was so happy.”

By May, they were living together. Two months later, he lured her back to the W rooftop and popped the question. There were tears — “Ugly crying, not Miss America crying,” McKnight jokes — and neither remembers if she even uttered “yes.”

We at Date Lab were practically doing cartwheels, and maybe all that enthusiasm was a catalyst: It was only months before we made the match that blossomed into our third engagement.

Digging through our database to find a match for mega-runner Daniel Zielaski in the spring of 2010, it didn’t take us long to find Anna Russell. A marathoner with a beaming smile, she described her dream date as a traveler and someone who “doesn’t need tons of stuff in life to make them happy.” Zielaski, a minimalist — “I sleep on an air mattress,” he said in his questionnaire — had covered 27 countries in six years and was in search of a fit adventurer. There was one catch: Zielaski described his type as redheaded; Russell is brunette. Ignoring specifics such as that had doomed us in the past; would hair color be the deal breaker?

Zielaski and Russell went out in May 2010, and from the first moment they hit it off. Zielaski declared her “gorgeous”; Russell said “immediately there was a good vibe.” They talked about running, shared steak skewers and cracked cans of PBR. Both emphatically rated the night a 5. Zielaski called it “truly the best first date I’ve ever been on.”

They met a few days later for a run that morphed into an 11-hour adventure. Strolling the city, they stopped for a picnic lunch, sat in on a free yoga lesson and shared a casual Thai meal near Eastern Market. From then on, Russell and Zielaski say they were rarely apart.

A year later, “we kind of agreed that we would redo” the second date, says Russell, now 28, who didn’t know that Zielaski, 27, had bigger plans. As the two walked near the start of the Capital Crescent Trail in Georgetown, he got down on one knee.

A SWING, AND A MISS

But anytime we start thinking “Hey, we’re getting good at this!” the matchmaking gods turn their backs on us. The result: those memorable Date Labs where our good intentions go horribly, horribly awry.

In 2006, we sent out techies Soko Hirayama and Jesse Crafts-Finch, the only couple ever to rate their date a zero — which, technically, isn’t even an option on our 1-to-5 scale. The article ran under a headline that declared: “Let the hatin’ begin!”