Matchmaking costs rose 26% between January 2025 and 2026
Dan Fugardi, a serial executive who runs a hair-tool business, rarely posts photos of himself and avoids sharing his location — a habit he traces to his years as a nuclear engineer in the U.S. Navy. On first dates, he asks that his romantic prospects put away their phones. “You go out with somebody you don’t know, and you’re risking throwing communications out into the ether that are potentially there forever,” Fugardi said. “It’s almost reckless, as a shepherd of a company.”
The Journal’s report lands against a run of executive personal scandals. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang resigned this past week after two extramarital affairs came to light, one with a suspected Chinese spy and another with an employee; Nvidia did not respond to requests for comment. Former Astronomer CEO Andy Byron resigned after being caught embracing the company’s HR head at a Coldplay concert, and a New York City law partner left his firm after a TikToker captured him kissing an associate in Central Park. Don Aviv, a security consultant for high-net-worth individuals who runs Interfor International, said the shift is structural: “Privacy, privilege, spontaneity — that’s become more and more of a rarefied position. Just being the CEO of a company or an executive puts you in that spotlight.”
Amy Andersen, who introduces tech executives through Linx Dating in Menlo Park, California, described her service in protective terms. “I’m there to protect them because we can’t get this wrong,” she said. “There’s way too much to risk.” Andersen searches an encrypted database of potential matches, puts candidates through an intensive vetting process with NDAs, and aims to create “a controlled dating ecosystem” in which she acts as a “bodyguard” for clients. Her rates start at $75,000 and can reach half a million dollars.
Concealment work begins before the first meeting. Dates sometimes receive scrambled biographical details and fake look-alike photos, and some matchmakers advise clients to downplay their status even on the actual date. Rachel Greenwald of Greenwald Executive Matchmaking recalled one client: “I had a client who drove a Maserati, and we put a strategy in place that he would rent and drive a Prius to pick up his first date.” Cody Shultz, who leads Private Client Protection at Guidepost Solutions and previously worked as a CIA officer, said a low profile and willingness to go dark on social media are green flags. A common scenario, according to the Journal, is when an executive with a deliberately limited online profile begins dating someone with fewer digital boundaries. Shultz said a partner with heavy social media use can be disqualifying: “If the person’s already showing that they are just talking about everything online, they’ve got a very open social media presence, that may be enough to have the executive decide that this isn’t the right play.”
Not every executive acts on that standard. Alex Wolf, founder of OnlyFnds, which provides financial services for OnlyFans models, said executives often pursue the very archetype they say they want to avoid. Visibility cuts both ways, said Bryan Goldberg, CEO and founder of media company BDG: “There’s no more magic in a first date. KKR’s legal department cannot perform diligence at the level of a single woman on a first date.”
In turn, some executives enlist investigative firms and reputation-management services to compile dossiers on prospective lovers. Aviv charges $4,000 on top of his standard rate to research a potential partner, covering everything from past social media posts to litigation history. Shultz said the emphasis has shifted: “There used to be a push for understanding any sort of civil or criminal litigation history. Now it’s changed to be much more of a stress on reputation.” Aviv noted that executive anxiety is at an all-time high, particularly after the shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson by Luigi Mangione and the Molotov cocktail–style attack on OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s home, and that research can include checking whether a prospective partner is involved in hot-button social or political issues. “Much of it is the same advice we give to these wealthy individuals before a business transaction: Vet and verify,” Aviv said.
Security concerns run deepest for high-profile female clients, according to the Journal. One of Aviv’s clients, an executive at a private-equity firm in New England, has him investigate every prospective date. Aviv’s work also includes fighting hackers who have stolen clients’ “boudoir shots” and hunting for deepfakes. The worst-case scenario is what he calls “honeypot situations,” which can impact both genders — someone planted to steal money or corporate information under the guise of a romance. OpenAI recently held training sessions warning employees about spies trying to access company data, including honeypots, and Huang’s affair with a woman suspected of working for Chinese intelligence has become an industry cautionary tale.
Greenwald said the task has changed shape: “Privacy used to be about avoiding one photographer or avoiding a couple of photographers that stood outside the executive or celebrity’s regular haunt.” Now, she said, it is about “controlling the room.” The modern threat is the person at the next table filming on a phone or a pair of smartglasses, alongside public surveillance such as Flock cameras on highways and facial recognition at stadiums. Private members’ clubs such as ZZs and Chez Margaux have become safe starting points. Within the cosseted walls of ZZs and Chez Margaux, concierge services and matchmakers do everything from making sure the table is far enough away from its neighbors to coordinating separate entrances. “We’re finding the private members’ clubs are the places where it all begins,” said Stuart McNeill, who plans dates through his luxury travel and concierge service Knightsbridge Circle. McNeill once arranged for two recognizable people to date in a private suite at a stadium concert, hiring people to fill the booth so the pair could use the balcony without appearing to be on a one-on-one date.
Lower-tech workarounds are common. Greenwald sometimes picks a casual neighborhood cafe on a Tuesday night instead of a Michelin-star restaurant on a Saturday. Investor Elena Nuñez said that before she met her husband, she had her security advisor rent Airbnbs so dates could cook dinner without learning her address. Erica Arrechea of Cinque Matchmaking once matched an oil-company client — who had no time for an evening out and did not drink — for a glass of water around 3 p.m. “It’s probably the unsexiest way to have a date,” she said. “But nine months later, they were engaged.”
Anxiety about how a relationship ends arrives early. Divorce lawyer Bob Cohen, of Cohen Clair Lans Greifer & Simpson LLP, who has represented Melinda French Gates and Georgina Chapman, said he prepares about 25 “cohabitation agreements” a year for top executives — documents that preserve a person’s right to remove a significant other from a shared residence. Lawyer Jacqueline Newman, who specializes in complex divorce cases, said she has seen clients seeking contracts at earlier points in relationships, particularly when they are paying a partner’s major expenses: “They don’t want those payments or even the relationship to be something that could create any legal obligation.” Hedge-fund founder John Overdeck’s divorce proceedings with his wife, Laura, risk upending the power balance within his firm’s C-suite, the Journal reported.
Lawyers advise executives to tell their boards about new relationships, especially affairs or romances with colleagues. BP CEO Bernard Looney resigned in 2023 after admitting he had not been “fully transparent” about “historical relationships with colleagues,” and Nestlé CEO Laurent Freixe was dismissed last year over what the company called “an undisclosed romantic relationship with a direct subordinate”; a representative for Freixe said he contests both the grounds and the manner of his dismissal. Cohen said the stakes are corporate as well as personal: “If it’s a public company, it could adversely affect the stock price, so it’s very much an important issue for a senior executive to deal with.”
The burden has left some executives, particularly a new class of AI founders, sidestepping romance altogether. Amy Andersen said those founders come to her for help and then do not make room for dating. “They literally do not leave work,” she said. “They are painfully single.”