Meet Jo Anne. Jo Anne is 37 years old, an Atlanta Braves fan, a career professional…and alone. She is not alone in being alone. Several of her friends and business acquaintances face the same loneliness.
They’re at that point in their lives when the career is simply not enough. A decade ago, in her mid-twenties, Jo Anne dated some, as she still does, on occasion. But, she was young, she had her future in front of her, and her job was both rewarding and fulfilling.
It’s funny, she thinks, it has just been one decade, and yet oh, how much she’s changed. She still loves her job, but she wants more. She wants someone with whom she can share her life…perhaps, there’s still time for a child. Now, that really is a change in the priorities she had set for herself just ten years previously.
She’ll be attending her cousin’s wedding this summer. From all indications, it’s going to be THE event of the season…a real dream wedding. But, for Jo Anne, it’s a reminder of dreams that haven’t come true. As she has done on so many occasions in the past, she’ll be attending the wedding alone. She won’t even try to catch the bouquet this time. It’ll just give her aunts something to talk about. “My, and she’s such an attractive girl. Why do you think she never married?”
Jo Anne is an attractive girl. Her looks have nothing to do with her single status. She still gets “hit on” when she “and the girls” get together. But getting hit on is not what she wants. The “hitters” are definitely not candidates that she would ever consider.
She reflects on what really is the reason she’s never met “Mr. Right.”
Time. “That’s it,” she says to herself. “Time!” Seems like a simple answer. Too simple? Just an excuse? No, it really has to do with time, or the lack of it. Her job keeps her busy. She likes that. She’s advanced rapidly in the mid-sized Innsbrook-based corporation for which she works. Her supervisors love her, her co-workers love her…but Mr. Right has never had a chance to love her.
By the time she leaves the office, most nights, she’s just too tired to think about going out. Besides where could she go to meet someone. The local bars? No way! And, while Jo Anne is active in community and church events, these have never truly furnished her with the right venue to really get to know someone, not in the way you’d need to know someone to determine if he’s the potential right one.
Jo Anne has read the personals in the local paper and tabloids, but for whatever reason, no “SPM iso SPF” seems to hold that much of an attraction. Besides, in today’s world, who would ever take a chance like that. Same goes for those online chat rooms. She’s never been on one (or is that in one?), but from what she’s heard, she’s not missing anything.
Sometimes, at night, as Jo Anne sits alone in her condo, munching on popcorn and watching a movie, she thinks it just might be too late. But she’s not ready to accept that as a reality.
True, she is pushing forty, but that’s just a number. She knows she’s worked hard to keep herself in shape, physically and mentally. She knows she has a lot to offer that right one, if, indeed such a one exists. What she doesn’t know is how in the world she is ever going to meet that one. She’s been leaving it to chance for years and it’s becoming pretty evident that chance is no more going to help her than the little fellow with the arrows.
For the past couple of months, Jo Anne has been contemplating doing something she would have never considered just a year or two ago. It’s something she heard from a friend, a co-worker, really, whose wedding she had recently attended.
Grace, was about Jo Anne’s age. While not close friends, they had commiserated over a glass of wine on more than one occasion. Both were lonely, both wanted someone with whom they could share their love, their lives. And then, next thing you know, Grace is engaged.
Grace had confided to Jo Anne that she had found her Mr. Right through a local introduction service. “You mean like Yentl?” Jo Anne had asked, imagining the matchmaker in Fiddler on the Roof.
“It’s not like that at all,” Grace had assured her. A day or so later, Grace had dropped a business card on Jo Anne’s desk. It read It Takes 2 – Carrie Daichman 967-9911.
“So Carrie is Yentl, eh?” Jo Anne thought out loud. To herself, she thought, “I’ll never make that call.” But, for some reason, she kept the card.
So, as Jo Anne sat in her comfortable home, on her comfortable couch, watching a video, alone, and thinking that somewhere, out there, was this guy. He was probably watching a video, alone. If they could just get together. But how?
She remembered the card. It Takes 2. “It sure does,” Jo Anne thought. “I’m going to do it. It’ll be a little gift I give to myself.” The next day, at lunch, Jo Anne went to her car, and from her cell phone, she made the call.
She set up an appointment with Carrie Daichman, founder of It Takes 2. That was the easy part. As the time for the appointment drew closer, Jo Anne grew more apprehensive. But, she told herself, “Just do it. Keep the appointment.”
That was six years ago. Speaking to me today, Jo Anne recalls her first meeting with Daichman, “Carrie was fabulous,” she says. She proceeds to tell me what happened in the days, weeks, and months following that interview: “Carrie was able to help me know just what I was looking for. Over the course of several months, I met many men through It Takes 2.”
Was it discouraging not to find the “right one” right away? Just the opposite, Jo Anne says. “I had the opportunity to meet many wonderful men, many of whom I never would have met had it not been for Carrie.”
Even though she dated several men who were not exactly what she was looking for, Jo Anne has nothing but positive experiences. “Because he knew that I had signed up (with It Takes 2) and I knew he had signed up, we could open right up. We didn’t have to play those games that people play when they first meet,” Jo Anne says. She views that as a real benefit for professionals who don’t have a lot of time to invest in the dating process.
Jo Anne also discovered another unexpected benefit of enlisting the services of It Takes 2. “It helped me get over the fear of meeting people,” she says.
Regardless of the success of the date, Jo Anne says, “I could always go back to Carrie and talk to her about how I felt and about how he felt about me. She always wanted me to be happy.”
One day, in early November, 2000, Carrie phoned Jo Anne and told her she had someone she really wanted her to meet. “When I interviewed him, I thought about you,” Carrie had told Jo Anne. Because she was dealing with an illness in her family at the time, Jo Anne declined. But, she says, “I reconsidered. I phoned Carrie and told her to have Jim Call.”
Jo Anne and Jim played phone tag for a couple of days, but on Tuesday, November 7th, they made a connection. A love connection?
“We hit it off on the phone, right away,” Jo Anne says, “but, I always enjoy talking to people on the phone.” The next evening they had their first date.
“I really didn’t have any expectations,” Jo Anne confesses. But of that first date, she says, “We really had a blast. At the end of the evening, I invited him to come with me to a party that weekend.”
He accepted. The morning after, Jo Anne says she woke up thinking, I really like this guy. She gave Jim a call and made arrangements for them to get together again that very day.
Although Jo Anne had met and dated several men through It Takes 2 before Jim came along, she was just Jim’s second dating experience with the introduction service. “Jim didn’t go to bars. He wouldn’t date co-workers, so he had figured out that if he was ever going to meet the right one, and remarry (he had recently divorced), he would have to use some sort of dating service. He picked up the Yellow Pages,” Jo Anne continues, “and plopped his finger down on the It Takes 2 ad.”
Within weeks of their first meeting, Jo Anne says both she and Jim were dating each other exclusively. Fifteen months later, Jim asked Jo Anne to marry him, and on July 18th, 2002, Jo Anne’s dream wedding became a reality. It was a dream wedding not because of the lavishness of the ceremony or the size of the guest list, but because this was the person she had always dreamed she could meet. This was the one with whom she wanted to spend the rest of her life.
Jo Anne says that thanks to Carrie Daichman and It Takes 2, she did indeed meet that one.
“I initially made that phone call because I wanted to give myself a gift. It turned out to be the greatest gift I ever gave myself.
“People ask us today how we met. When we tell them, they just shake their head and go ‘Wow!’
“I know that if I hadn’t met Carrie,” Jo Anne reflects, “I’d have never met Jim. I don’t think our paths would ever have crossed. When I think about how we met, I realize it really is ‘Wow!’”

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