Louanne Ward has been a matchmaker for over 20 years. Source: Supplied

“This beautiful, successful 52-year-old lady came in crying, telling me her life story and asking me to solve her problems. I remember thinking, ‘I can make a difference to this woman’s life. I can make her happy’.”

Louanne worked with the client for four months and set her up with a widowed man. The couple lived a long, happy life together. “She was my first client and my boss paid me the top package price. That’s when I knew I could be a matchmaker.”

Since then, Louanne says she has worked with about 14,000 clients. Her business, People’s Introduction Bureau, charges Perth’s elite men and women between $5000 and $15,000 to find their perfect match.

“My clients are multi-millionaires. They’re very wealthy and they’re used to having everything that money can buy,” Louanne told news.com.au.

Many of her clients don’t use online dating sites because they have a public profile to protect.

“They’re a privileged bunch of people, they come from a certain circle where they would see it as inappropriate to be involved with something like that. Perth is a very small town and everyone knows everyone.”

Her male clients are from “discerning” families and have achieved extraordinary professional success early on in life. “They want everything. So they can be difficult.”

Being wealthy has long allowed her male clients to punch above their own weight, Louanne says, “but they also want a girl who will love them for them, and not their money”.

Her female clients might be “taking over the world”, as Louanne puts it, but find men are intimidated by their professional success.

“They don’t look at them as the person they could come home to and lay their head down on at the end of the day,” Louanna says.

She recalls a top female lawyer who bawled her eyes out in Louanne’s office because all the men she’d dated were intimidated by her.

“She said, ‘I’m just a normal girl. I love getting in my Peter Alexander PJs, pouring myself a glass of chardonnay and watching movies’. I told her she was looking in the wrong circle. I said, ‘Go for a different type of man, one that’s going to put you on a pedestal’, and just by changing that she’s now married and happy.”

Patti Stanger from popular reality show The Millionaire Matchmaker on Bravo. Louanne met Patty at a matchmaker conference in LA earlier this month. Photo: Justin Lubin Source: Supplied

HOW DOES MATCHMAKING WORK?

Louanne meets with her clients multiple times, both inside and outside their comfort zones, to get a sense of who they are and what is important to them. Then she asks for a list of five non-negotiable qualities they want in a partner.

“It’s quite confronting for a lot of people because they come in with their list of ‘I want this and I want that’. And quite often when you get down it, what they think they want in a partner and what is best for them are usually poles apart,” she says.

Her company sources potential matches from their huge database and they also employ head hunters who seek out women in high-end beauty salons and fashion stores.

Both the client and the match have to submit professional and natural photos of themselves and Louanne draws up a full profile of both people, so there are no surprises.

“We’re not interested in setting up people just for the sake of it. It’s not for people who are bored on Saturday nights — that’s what Tinder is for,” she says.

“So what we do is make sure that there are enough things in common so that if there is that spark, there is somewhere for it to go. It’s not going to end over something like, ‘Oh, you don’t want kids or travel or you don’t drink’, because we’ve already sorted that out.”

For example, one of Louanne’s clients’ family comes from a long line of vineyards, so he needs someone who has an appreciation of wine. There’s another client who is a foodie and loves to travel, so paleo or gluten-free applicants need not apply.

Sometimes her job involves coaching “misunderstood” clients.

“I have a client who is tall, dark and handsome and on paper he’s amazing. But he goes out five to six times a week. So this perception that women have of him is that he’s a party boy. But he does that because he doesn’t want to go home to an empty house,” Louanne says.

“His lifestyle has prevented him from meeting the woman he wants to. So he just needs to change that perception.

“But we can’t predict chemistry between two people. No one can do that.”

LOUANNE TO THE RESCUE

Louanne recounts multiple stories of men and women arriving at her office in tears after a bad dating experience. It seems she is part counsellor, part friend and part Cupid. They text her for advice before dates, ask her concierge to book the restaurant and organise a car, and send photos of their date outfits for her approval.

“When it comes to affairs of the heart, you’re vulnerable,” she says. “I tell my clients, ‘You can be a little more vulnerable with me because I’m going to make sure these people are right’.”

Louanne says at least 40 per cent of her clients have tried online dating and several have been the victims of online dating scams.

“About six months ago, this extremely elegant girl in her 30s walks into my office in tears. She met this disaster of a man online. He looked like George Clooney, he was a doctor, he was everything she hoped for in a man and fell madly in love with him.

“He told her stories about owning private jets and multiple homes abroad, but he was a pathological liar. She was devastated.”

Louanne tells another story of an “extremely wealthy” woman in her 50s who dated a man for 14 months. “She was about to buy a block of land with him and he just bolted. He was a scammer.”

But piecing hearts back together, is the best part of the job, Louanne says.

“Doctors make a difference too, but there can’t be anything more important than finding someone to share your life with. The best part is being trusted to help these people. I feel so privileged every time someone comes to me.”