When Muriel Taylor's husband died in 2000, the Belleville woman wondered if she would ever find love again.

After all, in the southeastern Ontario city with a population of 46,000, opportunities to meet attractive men her age did not come along too often.

Then, in a chance encounter at the local marina just more than a year ago, Taylor ran into Joan Elder, the innovative Belleville entrepreneur known as the speed-date queen.

Elder runs a dating service called Social Singles that provides individual matchmaking, social events for singles and speed dates in and around Belleville and Kingston.

Joan Elder

"Joan said she needed one more lady for a speed date," Taylor said.

Little did she know, Elder had said the exact same thing to 69-year-old Roy Sanderson of nearby Foxboro.

Taylor and Sanderson attended Elder's seniors speed date in Belleville in April 2004, where 10 men were introduced to 10 women over coffee and spent eight minutes with each one.

Taylor and Sanderson, who were planning to be married on June 18, are just one of Elder's success stories.

"Seventy per cent of everybody who attends a speed date does make a match, and of that group of 20, there is always one couple from that group who do go on to form a long-term relationship," Elder said, adding that overall, 60 per cent of Social Singles members end up forming a lasting relationship.

She is proud of the statistics - especially since she established her business only two years ago.

A former supply teacher and residential counsellor to the mentally challenged, Elder started thinking about providing some sort of service for the region's singles after her marriage ended in 1991.

Suddenly single and with her friends all married, she found there was no way to meet others socially in Belleville.

For three years she ran a singles support group until she decided to return to school, obtain a business degree and join the corporate world where she worked her way up the ladder and became a manager at a large local corporation.

But the idea of creating a business out of her own lessons in putting her life back together after divorce kept niggling at her, especially because she had always been one of those people to whom others turned for practical, personal advice.

In 2002, Elder began to do market research and was astounded when she discovered data from Statistics Canada showing 60 per cent of 35- to 55-year- olds in Kingston and 40 per cent in Belleville were single.

"That told me there were a lot of single people out there," she said.

Surveys she developed and distributed showed that despite the large number of singles in the region, they were not making the effort to connect with others.

"It was because they didn't know how or they were frustrated and just gave up," Elder said. "They also didn't think there were any quality people out there."

Without a backward glance, Elder took the leap, quit her job and launched Social Singles, beginning with a mass mailout to everybody she knew between Kingston and Belleville - about 250 people.

Then she called local newspapers to ask for their support.

Starting such an endeavour might have been a more daunting task in a larger, more anonymous centre, but in Belleville the community-oriented media reported enthusiastically about her plan.

Within days, her phone rang off the hook.

"I was on the phone 16 hours a day within the first two weeks," Elder said. "It was hard to even have a bath or eat breakfast because the phone was ringing so much."

The business started as, and has remained, a three-pronged venture. Clients can attend $40 speed dates, which Elder hosts alternately in Kingston and Belleville.

They can also take part in Elder's $450-per-year individualized matchmaking service. There are also social events such as golf days, boat cruises, beach and casino trips.

Within two years of its launch, Social Singles had more than 1,000 clients and now, at any one time, Elder said she is busy matching about 100 single people.

Sales have grown by about 20 per cent per year and Elder expects them to continue to grow as word gets around about her personable style and success rates.

Elder said that while she believes she has some competition from Internet dating services, she has a different type of clientele.

"People come to me for the same reason: They want a significant relationship, they want a partner," she said.

"People don't come to me because they want a casual date. That really ensures a lot of the success rate as well."

The third-party accountability also can not be underestimated, Elder said.

"People say: 'If you go out with somebody who Joan introduced you to, you'd better be straight up because if you're not, it will get back to her and you'll be in big trouble.' " Elder met her partner six months ago in a parking lot. He's a 52-year-old retired police officer.

"We were parking our cars beside each other and just happened to get out at the same time. We were heading in the same direction and began to talk. He invited me out to lunch and the rest is history."

John Pliniussen, an Internet marketing expert at the Queen's School of Business at Queen's University, said the huge number of Internet dating sites has probably helped Elder by legitimizing the idea of meeting a partner through a third party.

"What's making it easier is that more of us are familiar with matchmaking and online dating as a result of all of the publicity, advertising and websites that are available," said Pliniussen, who met his own partner on an Internet dating site in 2001.

It also helps that so many people in society today are divorced, he said.

"If you have the money and you're serious, why not get an advocate for yourself, almost like an agent."

Pliniussen said if he had to turn back the clock, he would have searched for his mate on three websites, hired a matchmaker and asked for some coaching from a friend who had already been through the process.

Speed dating, however, is a little too brash for his tastes - even though it appears to have worked for Taylor and Sanderson.

(Frank Armstrong can be reached at armstrong@businessedge.ca)