About seven years ago, Miles Yamabe decided it was time to get serious about falling in love. The 58-year-old divorcé and structural engineer at the Pearl Harbor shipyard tried joining local clubs to meet people and signed up with online dating sites, but they didn’t bring the soulmate he sought. Then he saw a newspaper ad for Matchmaking Introductions Hawaii.

It seemed like the perfect match for him. While he had heard about other matchmaking agencies that did business in Hawaii, he decided on Reiko Keifert and her staff to help him find a suitable marriage partner.

And that’s Keifert’s mission: to help marriage-minded people find one another.

"I am hardly ever wrong," Keifert said with conviction.

Keifert, who started the company in 1994, helped bring Yamabe’s year-and-a-half search to a conclusion by introducing him to his future wife, Miko.

Miko Yamabe, 46, had heard about the matchmaking company in Japan, where she was born and raised and was working as a schoolteacher. A divorcée herself, she developed a love of hula, and after several visits to Hawaii, she decided she wanted to live here and marry a local man.

"I studied abroad in Iowa when I was 20," she said, "and I thought I was going to find a husband there then, but it didn’t happen. When that didn’t happen and then I went back to Japan, I wasn’t happy dating the men there."

Miles met other women chosen by the agency before dating Miko, but the relationships never progressed.

Miko said she enjoyed that first meeting with Miles. He said he immediately felt a chemistry with her, despite the slight language barrier.

The future Mrs. Yamabe admits she was surprised by her date’s strong reaction. "I didn’t know he was that serious." But then she found out she was the only woman, of all the previous matches, that he wanted to see again.

Miko returned to Japan, and the two corresponded daily via email. After a second date back in Hawaii, Miko returned home again. They had their third date in Japan, love blossomed and two months later Miles met Miko’s parents and family in Osaka. Even though they were both adults, Miles still wanted to ask Miko’s father for his consent.

"I asked Miko to translate into Japanese what I wanted to tell him, and I practiced for two weeks, but when I finally sat across him at the dining room table, I was so nervous that I fumbled my speech."

But her father gave his blessing, and now the Yamabes have been married for a little more than five years. They’ve been back to Japan 14 times since then, and Miles always remembers to bring back omi­yage to the agency office as an expression of thanks.

Keifert or a representative of her all-female team of matchmakers first interviews clients in a free consultation to assess their needs and desires. After meeting with the clients, they scan their database of about 3,000 men and women to find potential dates by matching identified areas of compatibility and relationship expectations.

The company’s numbers speak for themselves — each day 25 dates are arranged and 400 couples are formed, with 80 percent of clients eventually finding a mate.

Three to seven couples introduced by the company get married each month.

Office general manager Ami Allan said the company works to maintain a client list that is evenly split among men and women, but while the men are almost all local, only half the women are local and the other half are Japanese nationals.

Todd Nacapuy is 35 and getting serious about finding a life partner, though it’s tough to find time in his busy schedule.

Nacapuy works with Microsoft, is an avid golfer (one time caddying for local athlete Kristina Merkle at her first LPGA event), volunteers as a coach with Egan Inoue’s boot-camp physical training program and does occasional stunt work for "Hawaii Five-0."

Nacapuy also heard about the matchmaking service through a newspaper ad, and he’s been a client for a year and a half.

"This is a more professional service than anything on the Internet, and it caters to someone like me who is entrepreneurial," he said. "The agency also appeals to me because I don’t have a lot of free time, I travel a lot and I’ve become tired of the club scene. … This has been a different avenue for me. I mean, I have no problem meeting girls, but it’s finding the right one."

Agency consultant Rika Smith, who has been working with Nacapuy, said, "With all the personality analyses and testing that we do, we cannot measure chemistry. Sometimes I might think, ‘Oh, I think this woman would be awesome with this man,’ and it sounds great if they would get together, but come to find out there’s no chemistry on the first date."

Nacapuy said, "But Rika and the staff do follow-up work after the introduction. Rika asks me how the date went, what worked for you, and for me to give a compatability rating of between 1 and 5, 5 being the most compatible."

Allan added, "We need their feedback. Our clients are not only placing a financial investment with us, but also an emotional investment as well. … There has to be shared values, beliefs and a vision for a successful marriage."

SOULMATE SEARCH
Want to find love here in Hawaii? Here are some suggestions from the agency staff:

>> Choose someone close to their family, and if they don’t have family, then close to their hanai family and friends. Hawaii is a place based on ohana. People who are caring to their family and friends will be the same toward their partner as well.

>> Don’t date people from work. This is especially true here in Hawaii. If the relationship fails and word gets around, what is usually six degrees of separation elsewhere becomes two degrees because we live in an island state.

>> Meet as many new people as possible, including thinking of ways to meet people you would normally not meet. If your radius of activity is home to work, it is close to impossible to find love.

>> Start a relationship based on both parties having accurate information about each other. Many of those meeting online start with false information.

>> First impressions may be important, but don’t put too much weight on them. Keep an open mind. Chemistry is important, but with age the impulse to fall in love becomes weaker. When this happens, the things you look for in the other person become more stringent, and the things you check on in the initial meeting become way too detailed.

>> Be intuitive and insightful. Watch out for people telling you things that sound too good to be true.

>> Choose a partner based on what kind of relationship you will have with that person when the reality of everyday life sets in, not based on the person’s appearance, history and background.