Meet eHarmony success couple Chuck and Jeannie. They appeared in one of eHarmony’s first television commercials in 2004. Still together and happier than ever, Jeannie writes about how eHarmony has impacted both of their lives. Enjoy!

Here's a photo of Chuck and Jeannie from an eHarmony television commercial shoot in 2004.

Hi – We’re Chuck and Jeannie.  As I write this, tomorrow will mark exactly 7 years to the day since we were matched on eHarmony!  Yes, we were one of those couples matched that appeared in the early days of eHarmony’s television commercials and our story since that date has continued to be as fun as it was then!

After many failed relationships in both of our lives, we met later in life after our children were grown and we both had grandkids.  To be honest, we had both pretty much given up on the hope of ever meeting our “soul mate” and were both pretty much resigned to the fact that we would not ever marry again.  Then one day, Chuck started hearing radio commercials about this company called eHarmony, and he got curious!  I had never heard of it, but it popped up on my computer screen one day and invited me to “fall in love for all the right reasons”, so we both gave it a whirl and here we are! We often tell people that our marriage was made in heaven, but God used eHarmony to bring us together!

What we’ve learned through this process is that marriage doesn’t have to be hard.  The beauty of being matched with another in 29 dimensions of compatibility works!  Both of us remark often that these last seven years have been the best years of our lives, because we are truly “one”, and all the romantic mistakes of our past don’t even matter anymore.

Here are Chuck and Jeannie today. Seven years together, and still going strong!

We have found in each other a best friend, a lover, and the person that we will walk into eternity with.   There’s such a peace in knowing that our marriage is the calm in the storm of life where we come to restore and renew our strength.

Neither of us had ever experienced the kind of love that grows with each day (rather than diminishes!) before, but as they say that the proof is in the pudding, and we can tell you from 7 years of experience that eHarmony works!  In fact, one of our best friends (more like our adopted daughter!) met her Prince Charming on eHarmony a couple of months ago, and they’re already talking marriage!

Our families are so excited that we finally found each other, my mom bought me a sign a couple of months ago that hangs above our kitchen window and sums up our story quite brilliantly…
“It’s Never Too Late to Live Happily Ever After…”

The post Where Are They Now: eHarmony Commercial Couple Chuck and Jeannie appeared first on eHarmony Blog.

Even though our classifieds section just launched, we’ve already seen hundreds of items posted.  Here’s a quick sample of some of the great deals you’ll find:

•    A Gorgeous Watters Wedding Dress – 50% off
•    A Beautiful Oleg Cassini Gown – 37% off
•    A Swarovski Pearl and Crystal Set – $40

Head over to the classifieds section and start saving!

Also on Project Wedding: Wedding Songs, Wedding Dresses, and Free Wedding Websites

The post New on Project Wedding: Classifieds! appeared first on eHarmony Blog.

Each year has been different than the one before, and in the last eight years I have never been professionally bored.  I still love my job and I can honestly say that the success of eHarmony has validated my choice to stay.  236 people on average each day get married as a result of using eHarmony.  We could literally wallpaper our entire corporate headquarters with the photos that people have sent us.  I am enormously proud to tell people I work for eHarmony, and when I do, they always tell me they know someone that met someone special using eHarmony.  So how did it begin?

In March 2001, I interviewed with Dr. Neil Clark Warren and Greg Forgatch, the co-founders of the company, for a position in Customer Care.  I turned out to be the third Customer Care agent for eHarmony at that time, and the 11th employee at eHarmony.  The fact that I was interviewed by the founders was not because we were a small company but because they cared that much about who was going to be talking to their customers.  I am honored that I made it past their screening and have tried every day to live up to their trust.

In the early days of Customer Care, we realized that our service was different. eHarmony is something very emotional for people.  By the nature of our business, as a customer care agent you have to be skilled in computers and you have to be skilled with people.  I learned so much about the industry that we are in, and by all means that industry was developing around us, from the customers of eHarmony.

I was helping one of those customers in August 2001 and that customer turned out to be a reporter for the Washington Post.  I had been helpful to her and she wrote about it in her article.  My career in public relations began the day that I helped her.  In 2001, our Senior Vice President of Corporate Communications, Marylyn Warren, came to me to say thank you for doing such a good job with a very important situation.  She asked me if I would help track and communicate with the eHarmony success stories that were beginning to show up regularly.  She rightly saw the tremendous potential that our success stories had to communicate the eHarmony concept to the media and the general public.  The plan was not to have us tell people how great eHarmony was, but allow actual people who had benefited from the service to share their story.  Oh boy did it work.

The first eHarmony marriage happened in February 2001. I remember when we first heard.  There was an immediate all-company meeting (approximately 13 people).  We were filled with questions: Where were they from?  How old were they?  How did they hear about eHarmony?  The excitement was thrilling.  I remember looking at Dr. Warren as he confidently smiled.  He had told us all that we had something that could change the world, and on that day we saw the first drop in a tremendously large bucket.

The e-mails kept coming and the success stories began to grow.  I had the extreme honor of helping select the first couples to participate in the now-famous eHarmony commercials.  Those couples taught us so many things that would shape the future of the company and how we marketed the service. The couples in eHarmony commercials are REAL couples that found each other through eHarmony.  We thank them all for giving back to the community from which they came.

The impact of the successful commercials was felt immediately in the business.  Recognition brought new users into the system.  And, with more people came more success stories.  Soon it was more than I could handle alone.  In the early days, I kept an Excel file with the stories and contact information for our success stories.  Ironically, that file is now referred to as “Joe’s Historic File.”  A short time later we built a separate database to accommodate this information.  Now there are four of us who routinely monitor and maintain this database. The stories that are in that database are what we call eHarmony’s “gold,” and we truly treasure them.

Eight years have gone by very fast.  I appreciate all the people that I have worked with.  My job would not be possible without them.  I sincerely feel that I have worked for one of the best companies in America and I am confident that the eHarmony story, as it continues to be told, will be something larger in significance than just another business.

Happy birthday, eHarmony.

The post Happy 9th Birthday, eHarmony (A Look Back from Employee #11) appeared first on eHarmony Blog.