He’s 84, he’s a former restaurant owner, and he’s looking for love.
No, he’s not a new Golden Bachelor.
Tom Blake has found his love, but he makes it his business to help other seniors find theirs.
Blake started writing a newspaper column on finding love after age 50 in 1994 when he was, well, after age 50 and unexpectedly divorced from his third wife.
“It got to be almost a joke – a single man who just got dumped by his wife and started dating again,” the Dana Point resident recalled.
But it didn’t turn out to be a joke. Blake has written over 5,000 columns in weekly newspapers, he says. He’s published three books on senior dating, and he founded the website findingloveafter50.com. He also puts out a weekly email newsletter “on love and life after 50.”
Blake soon learned that finding love after 50 wasn’t simple.
“I thought I was hot stuff, but I very quickly found out it was a new ballgame,” he said. “It wasn’t gonna be easy but challenging. I hadn’t dated in years. I was now a senior single, so where do you begin?”
Blake began with introductions from friends and blind dates set up by those friends. He started chatting up women in a deli he owned in Dana Point, and even began holding singles events there.
And when he would come home from his dates, he would write notes about how they went.
He soon realized that he was “getting 40 dollared to death – almost every date cost that much,” he said. “I hadn’t anticipated that.”
So he switched tactics. Instead of going out for lunch or dinner on a first date, he and the woman would meet for coffee.
Along the way, he learned other valuable tidbits on dating – all fodder for his columns.
After going out with about 20 women on roughly 50 dates, Blake met the woman who would become his life partner for 25 years. They met at a singles event he organized in his deli.
He kept writing his weekly column, finding topics in the responses he received from those who were…
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