Couples who clicked with the net

Suesie Glagow had the riverside apartment overlooking St Paul's, the well-paid job as finance director of the Manhattan Loft Corporation and the regular stream of party invitations. "But somehow it was all such a shallow lifestyle," recalls Suesie, 43, who had been single for 11 years since her divorce. "The guys I was meeting were just after a good time and the parties were all a bit vacuous. Yet I was absolutely certain that I wanted to get married again."

At a friend's suggestion, Suesie joined the growing numbers of busy London executives turning to the internet to find love. More than 20,000 Londoners are now enrolling each month with any of the 100 online dating agencies, their names - from Date-A-Doc to Good Genes - reflecting the vast choice open to the 30 per cent of adults who tell researchers they are single.

As internet use continues to grow, these agencies are showing subscriber growth of 200 per cent a year and are losing the stigma that used to deter well-educated urban professionals. "It works, because it is less personal and less embarrassing than going to traditional agencies," according to the internet consultancy Forrester Research, which sees this as "one of the few services on the net, apart from porn, that is really making money".

For Suesie, it was the largest of these agencies, Match.com, that brought her close to Steve, a fellow south Londoner, three years older, whose online profile offered a 98 per cent match to her requirements. "We exchanged e-mails, and arranged to meet for a meal at Alastair Little in Soho," she recalls. "By the second date, at The Capital on Basil Street, I'd fallen in love. Steve took along his own blended brandy, which helped things along, and we were just having so much fun. I'd never met anyone so similar to me."

Steve - the American-born marketing director for Hewlett Packard - clearly felt the same. On the fourth date, he introduced Suesie to his three teenage children from his first marriage (Suesie has no children), and for the sixth date they flew to Miami to meet his mother. Then, two months after their first exchange of e-mails, Steve asked Suesie to marry him.

The wedding, 23 months ago, was a luxurious 75-guest affair at the five-star Chewton Glen Hotel in the New Forest. The couple now own a house in Fleet, Hampshire and a timeshare in Hawaii.

"I'd never tried a dating service before, and saw it almost as an admission of failure to use one," Suesie explains. "My parents are still embarrassed about it, the stigma it carries. But though I would have found a traditional introduction agency too intrusive, with online dating it's all left to the database. You're in control - I could take or leave who it came up with."

Of 110 e-mails she received in her first 10 days, some were worryingly aggressive in tone, and others shamelessly upfront: "I'm a milkman looking for sex; are you interested?" read one. Another, from "a handsome male model", included a photograph that Suesie guessed was 20 years out of date. Most replies, though, were from lawyers, accountants and entrepreneurs whose busy lives simply prevented them from meeting the right person.

As Match.com's vicepresident of romance, Trish McDermott explains: "The challenge is gaining access to a suitable pool of singles. At university, you're in this thriving community full of potential partners; but now you're working long hours, and probably don't like dating at work, or are sent away from home for your career. As you get older, loud clubs and pubs no longer seem attractive places to meet people."

The website currently has more than 350,000 members in the UK, 140,000 of them "active" with profiles available to search, and a further 36,000 new members registering each month. It is free to search for other members according to categories ranging from income to drinking habits, although if you want to get in contact you must pay £17 a month. The company recently analysed profiles of 40,000 of its single members in London, and found that 47 per cent of women are seeking a man who earns more than £75,000, while 31 per cent want a university graduate. Four out of five site users consider themselves to be professional or managerial, and there are around three men for every two women.

Unlike conventional local introduction agencies, the bigger digital dating services offer, quite literally, a world to choose from. Graham Freeman, 36, an IT consultant from Enfield, logged on to Match.com "out of curiosity to see how the database worked". He had not counted on meeting Debra, 38, then living in Toronto, who was seeking a pen-pal. But soon, they too found love, and, after marrying in her local church, Debra came to Enfield to live with Graham.

"I was looking for someone from South-East England, and filled in all the age and height preferences. But I also clicked to receive emails from other people who might fit the right profile. Debra had signed up for a free trial for a laugh, and when she saw what I wanted as my ideal woman, she said, 'Wow, you've just described me.' I was intrigued - I'd always been fascinated by Canada but had never been there. We swapped phone numbers after two weeks, and as we got on so well I arranged to spend Christmas there."

When Graham eventually met Debra at Toronto's airport, their initial nerves soon gave way to a sense of familiarity. "We had known each other for months, even though we hadn't met," he says. "It just felt right. Then, just before I left Toronto, I had an epiphany: I knew it was time to stop drifting and make a life plan. I knew I wanted to get married to Debbie." The wedding took place in August 2000.

A decade earlier, Graham had tried a conventional introduction agency, but was shocked at the mismatched dates that were suggested. "I presume there just weren't many people on their books. That's not a problem on the net, where you can browse around there and then. It's a bit like shopping for a book at Amazon from your desk," he adds. "Although I guess with Amazon at least you know exactly what you're getting."

It is this uncertainty about the true motivation of online singles that worries critics of internet dating. Anyone can post their personal profile to a dating website, however inaccurate: increasingly stories are emerging of women duped by still-married men, or of stalkers who target those they have met online. Consider the experience of Trevor Tasker, a 27-year-old petrol-pump attendant from Yorkshire who began an online flirtation with Wynema Shumate, supposedly a 30-year-old blonde from South Carolina. Trevor flew to the US to step up the affair, but at the airport discovered to his horror that Wynema was in fact 65, and had sent him a 35-year-old photograph. Worse, she was arrested during his visit after police found in her freezer the body of her 70-year-old former flatmate, whose bank account she was raiding.

"You can be balding, have five kids, be out of work - yet on the internet you can be Bruce Willis or David Beckham," warns Lynda Davies, chairman of the Association of British Introduction Agencies, which represents the traditional sector. "We've signed on to some sites as Mickey Mouse and our files were accepted. Yet if something goes wrong, very few sites give a land-line phone number or address where you can go for redress.

"You have to be very careful. You can scream as loud as you like in cyberspace - but you won't be heard."

Popular UK online dating services include:
uk.match.com
love.lycos.co.uk
udate.com
www.woowho.co.uk.