Couple of nearly 60 years celebrate Valentine's Day after meeting on original dating 'app'
Alex and Gladys Rysman have celebrated over 50 Valentine's Days together after meeting on what could be called the first-ever dating "app."
Long before dating apps like Tinder, Bumble and Hinge, there was Operation Match, a computer-based dating program created by students at Harvard University.
When the program launched in 1965, Alex Rysman was a student at Columbia University and Gladys Rysman was a student at Brooklyn College, both in New York.
"This was something brand new that was started at the colleges," Gladys Rysman told ABC Boston station WCVB-TV. "This took us all by storm."
To participate in Operation Match, the Rysmans, like all other participants, filled out a paper survey with over 100 questions about themselves and their ideal date.
They then mailed the survey and a $3 fee back to the founding students at Harvard, who processed the answers through an IBM computer.
A few weeks later, the participants would receive the names and contact information, including phone numbers, for their top six matches, according to a 2018 profile of Operation Match in the Harvard Crimson.
Out of the six names that Alex Rysman matched with, he only called one.
"He called me," Gladys Rysman said.
The Rysmans met in 1966 and got engaged one year later.
They went onto marry and become the parents of three children as well as the longtime owners of a jewelry store in Brockton, Massachusetts.
Decades after being matched with his wife by a computer, and as online dating continues to explode in popularity, Alex Rysman shared his own dating advice.
"Just keep swinging the bat," Alex Rysman told WCVB-TV. "And eventually, you'll hit it out of the stadium."
