Columnist Susan Snyder: Man, what a gift for Mom

Friday, May 10, 2002 | 8:59 a.m.

Flowers? Boring. Candy? Ditto.

Diamonds? Only if you're Norman Bates.

Hey, is Mom single and not liking it? Why not give her a man for Mother's Day -- or at least get her started on the road to finding one on her own.

(If Mom is married, better stick to Ethel M.)

Now, my mom is a 76-year-old widow who would rather have knees that bend when she wants them to. But Nate Purpura, 28, says he and his six Generation-X coworkers all have divorced moms and all "wish they could fall in love again."

It just so happens that Purpura is the public relations huckster for eharmony.com, a matchmaking website. Granted, his concern for his mom is a pretty convenient salespitch.

But U.S. Census figures show about 2.1 million women ages 45 to 64 are widows and almost 5.1 million are divorced.

Figures for men in the same age groups and categories show there are .73 divorced men per each divorced woman. And there are .22 widowers for each widow, which hardly accounts for a man's foot.

Pickin's are slim. About 20 percent of the 300,000 people using eharmony are 45 and older -- twice the percentage of a year ago, Purpura said.

"The older demographic people open up the search area and will travel across the country to meet each other," he said.

Not only are we the "older demographic," we're desperate.

Anyhow, the website is the creation of Neil Clark Warren, a California psychologist and author with more than 30 years of clinical practice and 42 years of marriage -- to the same woman -- under his belt.

Warren developed a couple of twists that he says sets his site apart from the rest. First, he has a list of 29 characteristics from intelligence to spiritual beliefs to levels of activity that he says a successful couple must share.

"I've never seen a really good marriage in which five or more are unmatched," Warren said. "If you could walk into a bar and find anybody who is matched with you on 10 of them, you'd be lucky."

Hence, eharmony's big, honkin' test. Its 1,000-plus questions are designed to find out who is sincere, who is crazy and who is just plain lying. Nuts and liars are politely rejected.

The result, Warren says, is a database of people sincerely looking for someone to hang with for better or worse. Conversations progress from pre-selected multiple choice questions to full-blown e-mail conversations, photos and phone calls.

The security and gradual progression attracted Deb Rood, who married her Las Vegas eharmony match, Rob Rood, last year.

She lived in a teeny Iowa town, and he lived here. They had a better chance of winning Megabucks than having their paths cross.

"When I saw Rob's profile, I threw my head back and laughed. 'Yeah. Right. Like anything good can come from Vegas,' " Deb said.

But through e-mail, Deb and Rob discovered they shared the same views on family, priorities and faith. She says she'd recommend it to her mom, if her mom was "ever in that position."

Purpura recommended it to his.

"She pretty much said I was crazy," he laughed.

Well, maybe he should throw in a box of chocolates.