For D.C. couple, one matchmaking site led to another

Abby Tankenoff and Santiago Merea met the way so many couples these days do: They were matched.

EHarmony paired the two 20-something Washingtonians (she a fashionista working as a stylist, he an Argentine native working in public policy), and sure enough, they clicked. This summer, after months of dating, they took the next logical step.

They started their own site for online daters.

In August, Tankenoff and Merea launched Onlinecouples.com to help those who met on the Internet find other online couples for friendship and support.

“When you tell someone you met online, that becomes the primary thing of the relationship in other people’s eyes,” Merea says. “I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, but people are like, ‘Oh, so you met online? Is that awkward?’”

“The relationship turns into a kind of novelty,” Tankenoff adds. “When (Merea) first told me about this idea, I was like, ‘There is a market for this. People are always trying to legitimize their online relationships.’”

The free site, which resembles the dating site Plentyoffish.com, is still spare, with about 30 registered couples. But the site’s forum suggests it is on to something. Folks have been posting about myriad issues, such as whether to tell others how they met and if online daters, ahem, do it better.

“We really want it to be a community,” Merea says. “We really want users to make it work.”

Jose Palma, 29, of Minneapolis and his girlfriend joined after reading about Merea’s project on Facebook (Palma and Merea went to the University of Minnesota). They wanted running buddies. “For us, our friends here, they’re either single or they’re couples and they’re not interested in doing the things we want to do, like the marathon,” Palma says.

So far, there’s just one other Minnesota couple registered.

“If it picks up,” Palma says, “it will be a good resource for us.”

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