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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 verifies identity, age and photos, runs a criminal and public-record background check, and interviews every candidate before anyone is eligible for introduction. Those five steps are what a firm then reads to judge whether someone is genuinely unattached and whether stated intent holds up against real behavior.
What the word "elite" is supposed to mean on a homepage is a separate question, answered elsewhere, and it is not about the consultation call that starts the relationship, which we have also covered on its own. It is about what happens once a person is actually being evaluated for representation: the checks a selective firm runs before it will put its name behind an introduction, what each one is built to confirm, and just as important, what it cannot.
"Exclusive" gets used as a description of price or clientele more often than it gets used as a description of process. Here it means neither. It means the standard applied to a person before your first conversation with them ever happens, the same standard whether the fee is $3,500 or ten times that. I run Master Matchmakers, and this is the plain account of what that standard actually checks.
The Order the Checks Run In
Screening is not a list run in parallel and checked off a list. It is a chain, and the first link decides whether the rest mean anything. Identity has to be confirmed first, because a background check run against an unverified name checks the wrong record, or none at all. Age and photo checks come next, confirming that the person is accurately represented. Relationship status follows, and it works differently from the first three: less a document, more a picture built from disclosure and the public record. The criminal and public-record search runs alongside that, the most document-heavy of the six. Last is not really a single check: whether what a person told us they want lines up with how they actually behave once introductions start. That one has no finish line.
Identity: The Check Everything Else Depends On
Every candidate for representation goes through government-issued ID and age verification before anything else happens. What that establishes is narrow and specific: the person applying is a real, continuous identity, matching the name and details they gave, not a constructed profile or a name borrowed for the occasion.
What it does not establish is everything that comes after. Identity verification answers one question: is this a real person. It says nothing about whether that person is honest, considerate, or a genuine fit for you. Those are separate questions, answered by separate parts of the process, and a firm that treats "we verify identity" as a complete answer to "how do you screen people" is skipping the harder half of the sentence.
Age and Photo: What "Verified" Actually Confirms
Age verification confirms the age someone states matches their government-issued ID. Photo checks confirm the photo submitted is an accurate likeness of that same verified person, not a placeholder, an old image pulled from somewhere else, or a photo of someone else entirely. Together, they establish that what you will eventually be shown was checked against reality at the point of verification.
The gap worth knowing about: a photo check confirms accuracy once, at the moment of verification. It does not run again on a schedule. A photo can pass that check honestly and still be old enough, months or longer, that it no longer looks much like the person you would actually meet. That is not a flaw unique to any one firm. It is a limit of what a one-time check can promise, and it is worth asking any firm how current a verified photo is required to stay.
Relationship Status: The Check That Leans on Disclosure
There is no single document that says "available to date." Confirming that a candidate is genuinely unattached, not currently married or otherwise committed elsewhere, works differently from confirming their age or their identity. It is weighed rather than proven outright: what someone discloses directly in their in-depth interview with a matchmaker, checked against whatever turns up in the same public-record search that runs before anyone qualifies for representation. A divorce still in process, or a marriage that was never formally dissolved, is the kind of thing a public record can surface even when a person's own account leaves it out.
What it cannot fully establish is a situation that exists nowhere in public records and was never volunteered. No matchmaking firm, however selective its process, can rule that out with certainty. A firm that implies otherwise is overselling what disclosure and a records search can actually deliver, and it is worth being direct about that limit rather than papering over it.
Criminal and Public Record: What the Record Actually Covers
Every candidate clears a criminal background check run against public records before becoming eligible for representation. What that establishes is documentary: a clean record, or a specific, discussable finding, either of which is more than what a self-reported profile on a browsing platform ever confirms about the person behind it.
What it does not establish is character. A record only contains what became official: a filed charge, a conviction, a matter that entered the public system. Something that happened but was never reported or charged will not appear in a search built to surface only what is documented. A clean result means nothing concerning turned up in the record, not that nothing concerning ever happened.
Stated Intent and Real Behavior: The Check That Never Finishes
The first five checks happen once, before anyone qualifies for representation. This one does not, because it cannot. In the interview, a candidate states what they are looking for: something serious, something specific, a timeline, a set of values. That statement is not something a record or a document can confirm, because intent is not the kind of thing that gets filed anywhere.
What actually tests it is what happens afterward. Coaching and post-date feedback run through every introduction, and a pattern shows up there that no single check could have caught in advance: someone who says they want something serious but consistently cancels, or whose conversations go somewhere else than their profile suggested. That pattern only becomes visible across several introductions, not from anything confirmed on day one. Say plainly: screening at the front end cannot finish this job alone, and any firm suggesting a background check or an interview can guarantee someone's intentions is promising something those tools were never built to deliver.
| The check |
What it establishes |
What it does not |
| Identity |
A real, verified person behind the name and details given |
Character, honesty, or fit |
| Age |
Stated age matches government-issued ID |
Nothing about how someone behaves once matched |
| Photo |
Photo matches the verified person, checked once |
That the photo stays current after that check |
| Relationship status |
Weighed through interview disclosure and the public record |
Anything never disclosed and never documented |
| Criminal and public record |
Documented history, clean or specific |
Anything that never became part of the record |
| Stated intent vs. behavior |
Tracked through coaching and feedback across real introductions |
Anything confirmable in a single check before you meet anyone |
What Screening Buys You
A Documented Starting Point, Not a Finished Verdict
In business since: 2001 | Private network: 65,000+ singles | Fees from: $3,500
Every person eligible for representation through Master Matchmakers has cleared identity, age, and photo checks and a criminal and public-record background check before their name is ever put in front of you. That buys you confidence in what is actually checkable. It was never meant to be, and cannot honestly be sold as, a promise about who someone turns out to be once you are sitting across from them.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does exclusive matchmaking actually screen for?
Exclusive matchmaking, done properly, rests on five documented checks before anyone is eligible for introduction: identity, age, photo accuracy, a criminal and public-record background check, and an in-depth interview. Those five are then used to judge two things no document settles alone, whether someone is genuinely unattached and whether stated intentions hold up over time.
What does identity verification actually confirm before someone is eligible for representation?
Identity verification confirms that the person applying to be represented is a real, verified individual matching a government-issued ID, not a constructed profile or a borrowed name. It answers one question only: is this a real person. It says nothing about character, honesty, or whether that person is a genuine match for you.
How is relationship status confirmed before an introduction?
Relationship status is weighed more than it is proven. What a candidate discloses in the in-depth interview is checked against what the public-record search turns up, including undissolved marriages or pending filings. No firm can fully rule out a relationship that was never disclosed and never entered the public record, however selective its screening is.
Does photo verification mean a photo is current?
No. Photo verification confirms the photo submitted matches the verified person at the moment it was checked, not that it stays current afterward. A photo can pass verification and still be old enough that it no longer looks like the person you would actually meet. That gap is worth asking any firm about directly.
How does a matchmaker check whether someone's stated intentions match their behavior?
Not with a single check. A candidate states their intentions in the interview, and that account gets tested against how they actually behave across real introductions, tracked through coaching and post-date feedback. A pattern that contradicts what someone said at the start surfaces there, over several introductions, not on day one.
A Standard, Not a Price Tag
Call it exclusive, elite, or selective, and the word should describe the same standard no matter what a firm charges: a documented identity, an accurate age and photo, a clean or disclosed record, an interview that goes deep enough to be worth something, and an honest accounting of behavior against stated intent. That standard does not scale with price, and a higher fee is not automatically a longer list. What is worth asking, whatever the number on the agreement, is which of these six a firm actually runs.