Younger individuals dance in The Matchmaker Bar throughout the Lisdoonvarna Matchmaking Competition in Lisdoonvarna, Eire, on Sept. 27. The annual occasion, often known as Europe’s largest matchmaking competition, attracts hundreds searching for love, music and dancing.
Rob Stothard for NPR
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Rob Stothard for NPR
LISDOONVARNA, Eire — Years in the past, whereas touring with my household alongside Eire’s west coast, I noticed a curious billboard. It was blue and sizzling pink, and confirmed a person with shoulder-length hair and a grey beard smiling out from the roadside.
It was for a matchmaking competition — Europe’s largest, our tour information assured us. The person within the photograph was Willie Daly, the city’s resident matchmaker.
“Perhaps any singles right here can head to Lisdoonvarna subsequent September to search out your one true Irish love!” he declared as we drove previous, incomes the uninteresting snigger for a line he had clearly delivered numerous occasions earlier than.
That was 15 years in the past. Since then, relationship has moved to apps and algorithms, to swipes and screens. However this September, I turned off the highway and into the city itself to see what endures — and what has light.
An indication advertises Willie Daly’s donkey farm and matchmaking museum on a highway close to Lisdoonvarna on Sept. 28.
Rob Stothard for NPR
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Lisdoonvarna, a village of fewer than 1,000 individuals, sits not removed from the Cliffs of Moher, the place the land falls into the Atlantic as if the world itself ends there. A single avenue, a scatter of pubs — and, for one month every year, a change because it turns into residence to Europe’s final nice matchmaking competition.
The custom stretches again greater than 150 years, when farmers got here after the harvest to search out wives. In the present day, hundreds nonetheless descend. Some are chasing romance, others simply the music and the jive. However beneath all of it is one thing uncommon: an nearly old school earnestness. Folks nonetheless come right here to look each other within the eye.
At a crowded resort bar, three ladies from County Kerry sit watching {couples} dance the Irish jive, an upbeat {couples} dance that resembles the Lindy Hop. Geraldine Beirne, Marie Walsh and Nora O’Sullivan say they have been coming since their 20s. Now of their 60s, they nonetheless return every year. No, not for males, they insist, however for the laughter, the music — and the corporate. That is to not say they have not seen romance right here earlier than.
Geraldine Beirne, Nora O’Sullivan and Marie Walsh take a break from dancing within the Rathbaun Lodge throughout the Lisdoonvarna Matchmaking Competition on Sept. 27.
Rob Stothard for NPR
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“My sister met her husband right here. My greatest pal met her husband right here. I did meet any person that was in my life for some time right here,” says Walsh.
Again then, they even bear in mind busloads of People rolling into city. That does not occur anymore. “Since COVID, Lisdoonvarna’s had a giant drop,” Beirne says. “The environment, the entire scene modified. It’s got quieter. However like that, if you’re good pals, you come out and you’ve got a ball anyway.”
The three sound wistful. But throughout city, outdoors one other bar, a youthful crowd has gathered.
“I am trying to discover real love,” says 30-year-old Fearghal O’Sullivan, cradling a pint of beer in hand. He means it.
Festivalgoers Liam Shivers, Mike O’Mara and Fearghal O’Sullivan drink outdoors the Ritz Lodge throughout the Lisdoonvarna Matchmaking Competition.
Rob Stothard for NPR
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“You don’t have any actual reference to Tinder, you recognize?” provides his pal Liam Shivers. “I wish to look a girl in her eyes once I first meet her. I actually imagine in love at first sight.”
Shivers pauses, laughs at himself. “I believed I had it as soon as, however she mentioned no. She mentioned, ‘Cease taking a look at me.'”
Later, extra pals will be part of them for Lisdoonvarna’s large Saturday blowout.
By night, the Matchmaker Bar is sort of at capability. There’s reside music, dancing, and within the nook, the star attraction — Willie Daly, the matchmaker himself.
He arrives to discover a crowd already ready for him. An previous pal needs solely to shake his hand. Three younger ladies sit anxiously, one having dragged pals from Spain and Dublin in hopes of discovering boyfriends. “I am sick of them complaining,” she says.
Daly thinks he is in his early 80s, although he is not positive (the city physician wasn’t a lot with data).
Denise Almas, who’s from Washington state within the U.S., meets matchmaker Willie Daly at Eire’s Lisdoonvarna Matchmaking Competition.
Rob Stothard for NPR
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He units up his sales space in an alcove on the entrance of the bar. As soon as it had a door, however he took it off. “It was too personal,” he says. “Took too lengthy to take heed to everybody’s story.”
Now, he tapes up indicators that say issues like “Love Will not Wait” and spreads out his questionnaires. “What are your pursuits?” “What are your private preferences for a associate?” Later, he’ll undergo individuals’s responses and begin making matches.
However first, he pulls out his most prized possession: a hundred-year-old ledger, handed down by means of three generations, certain in tape and rubber bands like some tattered spellbook.
“You do not rely the seconds,” he says, explaining the e-book’s magic. “You simply contact the e-book. You consider happiness and love. Shut your eyes and take into consideration being completely happy and in love, and you will be in love and married contained in the six Irish months.” Which, he admits, might imply something from six days to 6 years.
Over the a long time, Daly says he is matched some 3,000 {couples}. “That by no means appeared many,” he shrugs.
His system of charges is equally imprecise. Generally 3 euros, typically 40, most frequently 5 ($5.86). “5 euros for a husband!” he shouts, laughing.
One after the other, individuals sit with him. He listens, nods, then scribbles a phrase or two throughout their type: “Beautiful.” “Clever.” As soon as, “Pamela Anderson.”
It’s matchmaking, sure — but additionally ritual, theater, even confession. For a lot of, simply being heard is sufficient.
Béibhinn Moore meets matchmaker Willie Daly on the Lisdoonvarna Matchmaking Competition.
Rob Stothard for NPR
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Not everybody who sits with him is single. Laura Ryan, 37, has been with a associate for 15 years however by no means married. “I actually solely desire a blessing,” she tells him. His recommendation? “Inform him you bought loads of gives.”
Daly admits his personal marriage didn’t final. “I higher contact wooden,” he says. “You must by no means rely what you’ve got. They are saying it is best to by no means rely your sheep, rely your cows, rely your pigs, rely your cash or rely your wives.” Nonetheless, he beams when speaking about his 20 grandchildren. His father launched him to his spouse, he says proudly.
Now, his granddaughter, 25-year-old Oonagh Tighe, is able to carry the work on.
“Very first thing we are saying is, ‘Are you single?’ ‘Would you want a girl,’ ‘Would you want a person?’ ” she says. Tighe has already organized her share of matches, together with Patrick Mead and Angela Heavey, who met right here two years in the past. “She requested for our star indicators,” Mead recollects. “She seemed it up and mentioned, you are suitable. You are a match.” They’re nonetheless collectively, celebrating their anniversary on the competition.
Others journey a lot farther. Denise Almas, from Vancouver, Wash., flew in after stumbling throughout the competition on-line. “I acquired off relationship apps three years in the past. By no means once more,” she says. “That is extra regular. You are reside, in individual. And we want extra of this. We’d like extra group within the U.S.”
Almas isn’t alone in that frustration. A 2025 Forbes Health poll found that 78% of relationship app customers within the U.S. reported frustration with them, citing ghosting, superficiality and a scarcity of actual connection.
Melissa Condon dances at The Ritz Lodge throughout the Lisdoonvarna Matchmaking Competition.
Rob Stothard for NPR
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Rob Stothard for NPR
“Group is our tradition,” says Melissa Condon, a farmer from Tipperary attending the competition along with her husband. “It is about assembly individuals, speaking, telling tales.”
By midnight, the celebration has shifted to the Ritz Lodge.
Two dance flooring are going without delay. There is a DJ on one aspect, a reside band enjoying conventional Irish music on the opposite. Younger and previous, swirling collectively within the blur of all of it. Not everybody — not even most — have discovered love. However the pleasure is within the gathering, and the earnest perception that they simply would possibly.
After which, simply earlier than the lights come up, Geraldine Beirne, one of many Kerry ladies who thought the competition’s greatest days have been lengthy gone, finds me within the crowd.
Seventeen years a widow, she is beaming. She says she simply met a person.
“A gentleman,” she says, smiling. “With superb blue eyes.”
Perhaps, in any case, it is solely the start.
Folks stroll throughout the principle highway throughout the Lisdoonvarna Matchmaking Competition on Sept. 27.
Rob Stothard for NPR
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Rob Stothard for NPR
