by Jimmy Magahern

Terry Thrun says she was never in any big hurry to marry. The 49-year-old office assistant and Mary Kay consultant says she came close once, back when she was in her early 20s, but her mother’s ill health at the time took precedence over the relationship, and the engagement was eventually called off. Years later, she thought she had found the right man again, but over the course of the engagement, she decided the chemistry “just wasn’t right,” and wisely backed out.

When Thrun hit her late 40s, however, the urgency suddenly kicked in.

“You get to a certain age and you think, ‘Well, I guess I’ve missed it,’” she says with a laugh. “Most of my friends were already with somebody, so it was becoming difficult to go out.”

Like millions of other singles, Thrun turned to online dating, a once-novel matchmaking concept when it began in the mid ‘90s that has now grown into a billion-dollar industry. Trying out some of the top sites, like eHarmony, Match.com, AOL and Yahoo! Personals, Thrun was at first energized by the somewhat scientific process of meeting people based on their written profiles, instead of relying on the serendipity of chance meetings in bars or at parties.

But before long, the online dating world revealed itself to be not too different than the off-line one — only meaner, Thrun says.

“I was still running into men who were looking for the young, thin, model-type woman,” says Thrun, who candidly admits she’s none of the above. “But I wasn’t used to the type of rejection you can get online. In this forum, if people don’t like you, it’s easier for them to just delete your e-mail and never respond. It can be a little more distant and feel a bit more cold.”

Fortunately, Thrun soon discovered there were other online dating sites where age and dress size were less of a criteria. She came across LavaLifePrime, one of a growing number of new niche sites catering to older singles, where users have to be age 45 or older just to sign up.

“I found that just having that stipulation put you into a group where guys would be more accepting of the things that come with age,” she says. “People who are going to admit they’re over 45 right up front aren’t looking for that unrealistic ideal. As I put in my profile, I’m not as young and thin and flexible as I once was, but I think I’m wiser and funnier and I have life left in me. And people in this age group ‘get’ that.”

Bernie Constable certainly did. Not long after Terry posted her profile on LavaLifePrime, the 49-year-old letter carrier clicked on her picture and the two began communicating online. They set up their first in-person date on April Fool’s Day, 2008 — “just in case it turned out to be a joke,” Thrun says — but there was no foolin’ about their mutual attraction. Constable proposed to Thrun the following Christmas Day, and their wedding — her first — is set for September 26.

“I was able to be really honest and straightforward in the way I described myself,” says the happy bride-to-be — part of a growing population that, thanks in large part to online dating, has been able to put off that first marriage until the perfect match comes along. A recent USA Today analysis of the latest available U.S. Census records showed that the percentage of Americans ages 45 to 55 who said they had never been married in 2006 had doubled since 1990.

“I think as you age, you become more aware of who you are and become more accepting of yourself — and also, you become more aware of what you want,” Thrun says.

“It was just nice to get away from playing with the kids on the other sites,” she adds with a chuckle. “We’re in the same boat here. I don’t know what made Bernie ‘click’ on me, but we pretty much clicked from the start.”

< booming business >

In the last few years, more and more older singles have been leaving the crowded kiddie pool of the major online dating sites in favor of the adult swim found at the booming number of specialty sites aimed at the older demographic.

“It’s certainly a growing market,” says David Evans, a consultant who runs a blog called Online Dating Insider that’s been tracking the industry for the past seven years. “Match.com says they’ve seen significant growth in their over-50 dating market segment for the past couple of years, and they recently paid $80 million to acquire People Media, a major niche network that includes SeniorPeopleMeet, which gets roughly 600,000 monthly visitors. It’s the senior dating site connected with AOL, and one of the biggest. So yeah, it’s definitely a segment to watch.”

According to Nielsen/Net Ratings, in fact, Match.com’s 50-plus memberships has tripled over a five-year period, and Evans says other leading sites are now also considering spinning off their own seniors-only environments. Yahoo! Personals and eHarmony have each been seeing double-digit growth in their 50-plus markets, and in the next two years, the over-65 population is projected to make up fully one-fourth of all folks registered for online dating. In the coming year alone, 60 percent of women over the age of 65 and 30 percent of men in the same age group are expected to find dates on the Web.

Lally Rementilla, representative for the Toronto-based LavaLifePrime and its older parent site, LavaLife, says its 45-plus site has been gaining new members at an average of 5,000 a month, with little marketing.

“This is a demographic that’s very much in their prime,” Rementilla says, stressing the buzzword that’s neatly replacing “old age” for the reluctantly aging baby boomer population. “They’ve had families, children, careers — they’ve also dated a lot already, in their early years. And they really want something that will express to others the depth of their life experiences.”

Rementilla feels the whole “tell us about yourself” nature of creating an online dating profile is custom-made for the primers, who simply have more of a story to tell than their younger counterparts.

“They want to express not only who they are, but who they have been,” she says. “So we let them do more than just type out a paragraph of what they’re looking for. We allow them to express themselves in whatever way they want. With pictures, videos, music, poetry — whatever gives people a better sense of who they are, and what their life has been like.

“I find these people to be very expressive,” Rementilla adds. “I guess it’s because people in this age group have gone through a lot, and they have more to say. It can actually be very moving.”

< more to share >

Dennie Theodore agrees. A corporate communications manager for a financial firm who also dabbles as a theater director, the 46-year-old single mom has sampled both the all-ages and the over-45 dating sites, and feels that in the connect-the-dots game of compatibility matching, it’s the older set that simply offers more dots to connect with.

“Your frame of reference is broader,” she says. “I don’t know if the shallowness of some of the twentysomethings’ profiles is due to a lack of experience — because I’ve met some really dynamic 20-year-olds who’ve done way more than I’ve done at 46. But it’s what you’re willing to share that changes. And the more stories you’re willing to share, the more points of contact you offer somebody to connect with you. As you grow older, you gain a better understanding of what it means to connect with somebody across broader points than just what music you like to listen to or what beer you drink. And that starts to really have some meaning.”

Theodore says that at first she was “absolutely terrified” to share meaningful information about herself online, but now she blogs to other “reluctant social networkers” about the benefits of letting the world know more about you than might immediately meet the eye.

“It’s doing something that is intensely personal and private, but in a public forum,” she says. “And finding a balance of how much you can share in that forum to connect with somebody, yet at the same time stay safe in your ‘known’ world. It doesn’t get any easier, but you do get more comfortable with it.”

Jeff Reed, a former Phoenix gerontologist who, for the past 28 years, has operated a tour group for seniors called TJ’s Travel Club, says making older singles comfortable with online dating can often be a challenge.

“Personally, I think online dating is a very safe and practical way for older people to meet others with similar interests,” he says. “But a lot of them don’t do it. They’re not inclined to use the Internet in that kind of way. Heck, I can’t even get them to try Facebook!”

Reed, now 60 himself, says he originally started the travel club to help “jump start” the stalled lives of the widows and widowers of his terminally ill patients, whom he felt unequipped to console as a young gerontologist. “One day my wife just said, ‘You think your therapy is so important. Did you ever stop to think that maybe all these guys need is to get out and have a little fun? Let’s get a bus and go to the Grand Canyon!’”

He thinks online dating can fulfill the same need for people in their 70s, 80s and beyond, especially those who now find themselves alone after many happy years of marriage. Reed points to research on aging that suggests the deterioration of one’s social network, due to friends and spouses passing away or simply becoming inactive, can sometimes pose a greater challenge than even deteriorating health.