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About the Author: Steve Ward
Steve Ward is the Owner and CEO of Master Matchmakers and a second-generation matchmaker who built the firm alongside his mother and co-founder JoAnn Ward. He hosted and executive-produced VH1's Tough Love for six seasons, co-authored Crash Course in Love (Simon & Schuster), and has been featured as a dating expert by CNN, the Today Show, Oprah, Glamour, People, and Cosmopolitan. He has spent more than 25 years personally coaching and matching relationship-minded singles nationwide.
Quick answer: Master Matchmakers has run verified, background-checked introductions nationwide since 2001, with fees from $3,500, and this is the market we know best because the firm is headquartered in Palm Beach Gardens. West Palm Beach now holds two professional populations that barely overlap, and a real search has to reach both.
Our office is in Palm Beach Gardens, about fifteen minutes up the road. I mention it once and then move on, because it is the only city article I write where I am describing the place I actually live and work rather than a market I have studied. What follows is what I see here.
What I see is a county that has changed shape faster than its social life has caught up. There are now two substantial professional populations in and around West Palm Beach, and they are not really meeting each other.
The Financial Arrivals
The Business Development Board of Palm Beach County reports that more than 140 companies have expanded or relocated into the county over the past five years, the shift widely nicknamed Wall Street South. The names involved are not small: Citadel, BlackRock, Elliott Management, Goldman Sachs, Virtu Financial, Point72, along with Bessemer Trust, Baron Funds and Paulson Capital.
It is still happening. In January 2026 Wells Fargo announced it is moving the headquarters of its wealth and investment management division into roughly 50,000 square feet at One Flagler downtown, with about a hundred employees relocating by the end of the year, which took that tower to fully leased. One Flagler also holds Lancer Capital, the Glazer family office, and Highpost Capital. Nearby, the 115,000 square foot Banyan & Olive building houses Dycom Industries and Alvarez & Marsal Capital.
The people inside those firms are a specific kind of single person: senior, mobile, frequently relocated here for the job within the last few years, and working hours set somewhere other than Florida.
And Everyone Who Was Already Here
The county did not start in 2020. There is a deep, long-established professional class here that predates every one of those relocations: wealth managers and family offices that have operated locally for decades, attorneys, physicians, real estate, the businesses that serve Palm Beach island, and the equestrian economy out west around Wellington.
These are people with roots. They have local families, a full social calendar built over twenty or thirty years, and opinions about how the county has changed. They also, in my experience, have a smaller dating pool than they should, because a social circle assembled over decades eventually contains everybody you are ever going to be introduced to by it.
The gap, stated plainly: one group has a large network somewhere else and almost none here. The other has a deep network here that has stopped producing anybody new. Each is the answer to the other's problem, and they are not in the same rooms.
Why the Two Do Not Meet on Their Own
Partly it is where they are. The arrivals are concentrated downtown, in and around the new towers, and in the districts that have grown up alongside: Clematis Street, Rosemary Square, and the NORA District further north, which is still filling in and gets a boutique hotel with a Parisian brasserie this year. The long-established population is spread across El Cid and Flamingo Park south of downtown, Northwood to the north, out to Wellington, up to Jupiter, and across the bridges onto Palm Beach island.
Partly it is how people arrive at a social life. If you moved here eighteen months ago for a job, your circle is your colleagues, because that is the only structure you were handed. If you have been here since the nineties, your circle is a set of families, schools and institutions that took decades to build and does not have an obvious door in it.
Neither of those is a failing. They are just two different ways of belonging to the same county, and left alone they do not intersect.
| Part of the county |
Who is there |
Why a search should include it |
| Downtown and the waterfront |
One Flagler, Banyan & Olive, Clematis Street, Rosemary Square |
Where the relocated financial population actually works and mostly lives |
| South of downtown |
El Cid and Flamingo Park |
Historic, walkable, and largely people who were here first |
| Across the bridges |
Palm Beach island |
A genuinely separate world from the mainland city, and easy to leave out by accident |
| North along the coast |
Palm Beach Gardens and Jupiter |
Established households and a short drive, frequently the strongest fit for a long resident |
| West |
Wellington and the equestrian belt |
Its own professional and social economy, almost invisible from downtown |
The county is a chain of towns along the Intracoastal and I-95 rather than one city with suburbs, so a Jupiter to Boca introduction is ordinary rather than ambitious.
What a Search Does That a Social Circle Cannot
Checked First, Introduced Second
Introductions Across a Line Nobody Crosses
In business since: 2001 | Private network: 65,000+ singles
Before anyone is eligible to be introduced to you, they clear age, identity and photo verification, a criminal and public-record background check, and a personal interview. When a genuine fit surfaces you receive the verified profile, the photographs and a phone number, you speak with the person directly, and you approve the introduction yourself. Much of this industry withholds names and photos until shortly before a date. We do not, and there are no blind dates.
The verification does something specific for each group. If you arrived recently, it substitutes for the local knowledge you have not had time to build: you begin knowing a person's real name, age, face and public record rather than relying on a network you do not yet have. If you have been here for decades, it does the opposite job, taking you outside a circle where everyone is already vouched for by everyone else and therefore nobody is new. Nothing about you is posted anywhere, and your details reach one screened person at a time. Feedback and one-on-one coaching follow each introduction, and the contracts do not expire on a timer. The sequence is set out on our How It Works page.
The Fee, and Which Assumption Costs Most
Fees start at $3,500, and the more open you are about who and where you are willing to be matched, the lower the fee runs. In this county the expensive assumption is almost always about which of the two populations a person belongs to. Newer arrivals frequently want somebody who also came from the north, on the theory that the reference points will match. Long residents frequently want somebody with roots, on the theory that a recent transplant will leave. Both instincts halve a county-wide search at a stroke, and both are held far more firmly than the evidence supports. Where your total lands depends on how many introductions and coaching sessions you want, how narrow the criteria are, your own marketability, and which matchmaker leads. We would rather publish the starting number than hold it until you are on a call.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much does a matchmaker cost in West Palm Beach?
Master Matchmakers' fees start at $3,500, and the more open you are about who and where you will be matched, the lower it runs. Most firms working Palm Beach County will not name a figure before a call. Your total tracks introductions, coaching sessions, criteria, and which matchmaker leads.
Is Master Matchmakers actually based in Palm Beach County?
Yes. The firm is headquartered in Palm Beach Gardens, roughly fifteen minutes north of downtown West Palm Beach, and has been in business since 2001. It works nationwide, but this is the home market rather than one served from somewhere else.
I relocated here for work and know almost nobody. Where should a search look?
Outside the towers, mostly. The people you have access to already are colleagues and near neighbours downtown. The larger and less obvious pool is the county's long-established professional population in El Cid, Flamingo Park, Northwood, Palm Beach Gardens, Jupiter and Wellington.
I have lived here for decades and feel like I have met everyone. Has that changed?
Substantially. More than 140 companies have expanded or relocated into Palm Beach County over the past five years, bringing a senior professional population that your existing circle has no natural connection to. A sourced search reaches them; a social circle built over thirty years does not.
How wide should a West Palm Beach search be?
County-wide is normal here. Palm Beach County is a chain of towns along the Intracoastal and I-95 rather than one city with suburbs, so introductions between Jupiter, Palm Beach Gardens, West Palm Beach, Wellington and Boca Raton are routine rather than a stretch.
Two Populations, One County
The interesting thing about this market is that the shortage is not of people. It is of routes between them. A senior executive who moved down eighteen months ago and a physician who has practised here since the nineties would both tell you the county is short of options, and both would be describing the same county from opposite sides of a line neither of them crosses. A firm working a West Palm Beach matchmaker clientele should be able to describe both populations to you and say which one it is going to search. Nobody can promise you an outcome, and a firm that does is selling something no one can deliver. What we are answerable for is that the person you meet is exactly who the profile said, verified before the introduction was ever offered to you.