Krystal Walter is sitting boothside at Craft Beer Market in Edmonton waiting for a client to arrive.
It’s a crisp afternoon and she’s dressed simply, but impeccably: a perfectly fitted black t-shirt and wide-legged dark pants. Dark glossy hair cascades down her shoulders and frames her full lashes and flawless makeup.
Her voice is barely audible over the speaker booming the Red Hot Chili Peppers, while she orders a diet Coke. Suddenly, she spots her client, Shandrie Lewis, and jumps up to offer a friendly hug.
Lewis, blonde with trendy, clear-rimmed glasses and a calm, self-assured demeanour, has been divorced for nine years. She has two young children and a thriving real estate business. On a superficial level, she doesn’t strike you as the kind of person who might need to enlist the help of a matchmaker.
“I’ve done the dating thing on and off and it’s fun, and you get that dopamine for a bit, but then you crash pretty hard when it’s disappointing,” Lewis says. “Now I’m at a place where, if somebody comes along, I’ll keep the door open, but a lot of times men drain you. Unless they improve my life, I’m not interested.”
Many of the clients at Krystal Walter Matchmaking fit this general description: busy, successful, grown up, tired of scrolling apps and looking for something more serious than a fling. “Forty to 50 is a tricky spot, especially with kids,” Walter says. “Because a lot of the clients are either in their 30s and haven’t had kids yet or they’re older and their kids are almost out the door and they’re starting over. So there’s a smaller bracket. So far, Shandrie has dated older. I think now we’ll focus on slightly younger matches.”
While Lewis signed up as a database client — the base level service — Walter’s services increase in price and offerings from there, all the way to Millionaire’s Club Exclusive, which comes with a $300,000 price tag.
The natural question: why would anyone pay (and, more importantly, pay that much) to find love when it’s ostensibly available with a swipe? For one, many people — especially those of a certain age — are burned out from using the apps. But part of it is good marketing. Walter has nearly 15 years’ experience and at least 16 marriages on her resumé. She launched her company as a solo venture and has scaled it up, positioning herself in the media as a dating expert and creating an ever-evolving service in a fickle industry.
But there is a cost to her, too. As the face of her brand, Walter is required to look poised and put together — whether that’s in the office or out and about in the city. As she quickly learned, if she takes her image out of the equation, the brand collapses.
Before she was a matchmaker, Walter was a 20-something in love.
She followed her partner around Western Canada — to Vancouver and Fort McMurray — before she discovered she was pregnant. The relationship didn’t last and she moved to Sherwood Park to be near her parents for support raising her son. Her dad was a police officer who had imbued her with street smarts while her mom worked as a hairdresser, gleaning secrets as she cut hair all day.
“I would be embarrassed sitting in her shop hearing the conversations she was having,” Walter says. “I said, ‘I’ll never let people tell me all these things.’ And now that is my day, all day.” But her entry into matchmaking wasn’t born from an affinity for love stories. With a burgeoning competency for business and an appetite for hustle, she saw a gap in the market and decided to fill it.
After finding her footing as a young mom working in commercial real estate, Walter decided to sign up for an American matchmaking service at the suggestion of her boss and mentor. The experience was nothing short of awful.
She tried another one.
“There was really no filtering or screening,” she remembers. “One guy was a drug dealer. He switched cars halfway through our date. Then there was a matchmaker who branded herself a little more high-end, but she was setting me up with really old guys.”
So, she launched her own service as a side hustle from her day job — all while she was enrolled in business school and raising a kid.
She quickly learned an important lesson: branding is everything. “I did a brief period of time working in residential real estate. A lot of my branding came from that — it was very realtor-esque. I had to learn how to build a website. I had to learn how to do all the administration stuff before I could pay people to do it,” she says. “But I was busy immediately.”
She met a casual boyfriend who worked in media and he got her on TV as a go-to source for dating expertise — another way to spread the word about her service and get her face into the public eye. Walter’s approach, at first, was antithetical to her current model. She took on everyone who contacted her as a client. She charged as little as $200. She didn’t use photos. She just wanted everyone to meet everyone.
Some of those early matches worked out, but most didn’t. “I feel like a lot of people were mad at me,” she says. “I used to cry myself to sleep. I cringe just thinking about it. But I have a couple that are still together from the early days. She lives here and he lives in Calgary and they still go back and forth.”
But as she gained experience, she refined her approach. Her fees went up incrementally. She only worked with people with whom she clicked — and that started expanding from Edmonton and Calgary to Vancouver, Toronto, New York, Seattle, L.A., Miami and Nashville. She also moved the company to Calgary (where she lives today), arguably a more image-conscious city than Edmonton.
Walter tried to back away from being the face of the brand, but it proved impossible.
“I went through a phase after I had a breakup where I didn’t want my face out there anymore,” she says. “I didn’t want to do TV and all that stuff. I quit doing everything. And interest went down so fast.” Some of her reluctance was the exhausting beauty standards to which she holds herself, in part to match her very wealthy clients. Hair extensions and dyeing (“I’m fully grey,” she says), manicured nails done every two weeks, botox. Though we’re roughly the same age, early 40s, Walter looks sleek and ageless — and I suddenly feel like a frumpy middle-aged mom.
When she goes out, her clients and prospective clients recognize her. “I went into work one time on a Friday when I didn’t have any meetings. I was wearing a hoodie and leggings and one of my biggest clients popped in. He looked at me and said, ‘It’s not a Saturday.’ I never went downtown like that again,” she says.
Maintaining an extensive beauty regimen for work and also for one’s own dating life is a lot. At the time of our first interview, Walter was looking forward to her own upcoming date, which a scout had arranged for her. (A scout is someone her company outsources to help find matches outside of her company’s database.) Since then, she has found a strong match with someone from her past.
But dating as a matchmaker is akin to working as a chef all day then going home at night to cook a meal.
“Going online never works well because people either know me, or once they find out what I do, they think it’s weird, or they think I’m just trying to poach them for my service,” she says.
“I think being single helped me as a matchmaker. I have been online. I’ve gone to matchmakers. I know what it’s like to date. But I don’t enjoy dating because I spend the whole day doing it for someone else.”
It wasn’t long ago that online dating had a stigma. Turning to the internet to find love was a last-ditch resort; it meant you had failed at making a connection in the real world like, well, all of your ancestors.
But with the advent of dating apps — and the endless supply of new faces they provide — meeting a partner online suddenly became socially acceptable and even the norm. In the United States in 2013, meeting a heterosexual partner online became the most common way, above meeting through friends, family, at social events and in public places, according to a Stanford University study. Fast forward a few years to 2017: 39 per cent of heterosexual couples met their partner online along with 65 per cent of same-sex couples.
Online dating, which Walter encourages all her clients to try, is not without its hardships. A survey of 500 people, aged 18 to 54, released in 2022 by the data analytics company Singles Reports, found that almost 80 per cent of respondents experienced burnout or emotional fatigue from online dating.
Matthew Johnson, a professor of human ecology at the University of Alberta, teaches a course on intimate relationships and found, anecdotally, more young people are shying away from the apps.
“It does seem like there are fewer of them that are talking about dating apps than in prior years,” he says. “I know, even five years ago, I had a discussion in class, and a sizable proportion of university students had met their partners through Bumble or Hinge or one of these dating apps. Now, it’s a few shameful hands that go up to admit that they’re using the apps. The bulk of them are relying on in-person ways.” Meeting in real life is easier, he points out, when you’re on campus every day, surrounded by mostly single people your own age.
Above all else, online dating is laborious. You have to create an appealing profile, sort through the endless stream of faces, initiate chats, see if those lead anywhere and go on the date.
Do that on repeat and you might burn out too.
The idea behind matchmaking, which has a storied history in many cultures, is someone takes on that legwork for you and applies their experience and judgement.
“Matchmaking is a very old profession. This is something that has gone back through cultures to the present,” Johnson says. “This kind of job has always existed in some form. It is a testament to the fact that finding your person has always been difficult.”
The job has also been embedded in pop culture over the last couple of decades: The Millionaire Matchmaker, Indian Matchmaking, and, recently, on the big screen, Celine Song’s The Materialists.
I get the appeal of a matchmaker. It lies in valuing an expert or at least an objective opinion.
I didn’t meet my husband through a professional matchmaker, but our pairing stemmed from the concept. My cousin told me about a friend he thought would be perfect for me (a musical encyclopedia, hiking fanatic, good with kids) and, through him, my now-husband and I both agreed to a date.
The fact that my cousin never actually gave us each other’s numbers is perhaps an argument for using a professional matchmaker, but when we found each other online soon after, my cousin’s stamp of approval prompted us both to make an effort in a way we would not have otherwise.
Melissa, another one of Walter’s database clients, says she fully trusts Walter’s opinion.
“It’s huge,” she says to Walter, sitting across the table at Craft a little later in the afternoon. “I don’t think I would say no to anybody you sent me. I see this as a journey and I trust you. It may not be a match, but you never know that until you meet the person.”
Melissa’s list of dealbreakers is short: smokers and Trump supporters.
This is what all matchmakers hope for in a client. They want someone who is open-minded and doesn’t come to the service with a Frankenstein list of characteristics for someone who doesn’t exist. (Unrealistic expectations are one of a few things The Materialists gets right about the career, Walter says.)
“If I get someone who has a big list, it’s challenging,” Walter says. “But what’s harder is the people who have the big list, but they don’t tell you about it.”
You would assume that her high-level clients — those paying upwards of $125,000 — would be the ones with extensive lists, but that’s not always the case. The ultra-rich are often seeking discretion and don’t want to appear on apps.
All clients fill out a survey and receive personal matches from Walter or one of her two employees, but those who pay for the top-tier Millionaire’s Club (they must be a minimum age of 30) get perks like one-on-one coaching, matches to other high-earning people, aggressive advertising, photoshoots, headhunting matches, access to luxury social events, and options for non-disclosure agreements, to name just a few.
“The main reason clients choose the highest-level package is that they want someone at an extreme wealth level, or they are specifically looking for an ultra-high-net-worth match celebrity, or athlete,” Walter says. “We don’t have many clients in Alberta choosing this level. Most stay with the first Millionaire’s Club package.”
Walter’s next business venture is an app called Monroe Match. One part swiping, one part matchmaking, it still uses algorithms to pare down potential partners, but Walter’s matchmaking team picks who will appear on your screen. They will also offer online coaching through the process. The demographic they’re targeting with Monroe Match: younger people.
“It’s like online dating, but you’re getting the assistance of a matchmaker,” says Elyse Roberge, founder and CEO of Darling Media, which Walter uses for her PR. “It is more curated; when someone comes across your screen you can actually see how well you match with them.”
The app and Walter’s evolving business model are what drew veteran matchmaker Jane Carstens to the matchmaking service. After working for 25 years in Toronto and Vancouver, where she lives, Carstens approached Walter about taking her on as an employee for the last leg of her career.
“I love the way she thinks,” Carstens says. “She’s a fast thinker and when she does have a thought or suggestion, she moves on it. She makes a decision and gets it done.”
Part of that decisiveness is earned after years of adapting to business challenges.
“I feel like, in a way, that’s one of the reasons why I was meant to do this,” Walter says. “I never gave up any time something happened. I just keep going.”
This article appears in the June 2026 issue of Edify
