Operation Match: Couple found love on a 1960s IBM

In 1966, Bob Weatherford broke up with his high school sweetheart. He was a junior at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, which was reputed to be a party school, but he didn’t fit into that stereotype.

“I didn’t drink, maybe an occasional beer, and I was looking for a steady girlfriend again,” he said.

About 60 miles away, in Harrisonburg, Virginia, Lori Godfrey was studying at James Madison University, an all-women’s school. She was on the fencing team and was dating “some guy.”

“I didn’t like alcohol, didn’t date around, and the party scene didn’t interest me all that much,” she said.

The likelihood that Weatherford and Godfrey would meet through the usual pipeline of the day – school mixers, frat parties and blind dates – were slim to zero.

But fate got a nudge, or better yet a shove, from technology.

Three decades before online dating exploded with Match.com, the two met through Operation Match, the first major computerized dating service in the U.S. It launched in 1965 using an IBM mainframe computer to match college students based on questionnaire responses.

This month, the Weatherfords, Laguna Woods residents for four years, celebrated their 59th wedding anniversary.

“We are still lovers and best friends, all because of our interests and the many things we have in common,” they said almost in unison in an interview at their home in the Village.

Apparently, Cupid’s vagaries were also an issue in the mid-1960s among emerging computer nerds who were just getting to know the machinations of IBM 7090 computers and their punch card glyphs.

Three guys – Jeff Tarr and Vaughan Morrill from Harvard and Douglas Ginsburg, a Cornell dropout – saw potential in the room-sized computer as a virtual love machine and founded Operation Match.

To get the process going, they sent questionnaires, or what they called a “personality test,” to students at Ivy League universities, which at the time were male only, and the Seven Sisters, East Coast area women’s colleges. They eventually expanded the matchmaking pool nationwide.

Operation Match’s brochure promised to “take the blindness out of a blind date.”

“If you’re the adventurous type, you’ll probably want to take part in one of the most interesting social experiments ever,” the brochure said.

Once the questionnaires were completed and returned with a $3 fee, Operation Match went to work. The responses were transferred from paper to punch cards and processed on the IBM 7090. About a week later, each participant received a printout with names and phone numbers for five potential matches.

The questionnaire started with 75 queries. Over time, the number doubled to 150. They offer insight into the mores of a changing era: It was the middle of the 1960s, the decade that brought a slew of social changes: civil rights, the sexual revolution, shorter skirts and longer hair.

The questions began with basics like age, gender, race and racial attitudes, appearance and preferences in appearance of dating prospects, family background. Religious beliefs and practice, grades, academic and professional ambitions, hobbies, sports and attitudes toward money and premarital sex were covered for both the participant and the ideal prospective dates.

There were even multiple choice questions and “which door would you choose” queries to gauge values and priorities.

By fall 1965, reportedly 90,000 questionnaires had been returned. Respondents received at a minimum three matches, with five or six being most common.

“In October 1966, I sent in my form and my three dollars and got five names back,” Bob Weatherford recalled.

“I got none for some reason, but he started writing me letters,” said Lori Weatherford, adding that she had been skeptical of him at first since he went to such a party school.

Things progressed when Bob came across a frat brother who knew Lori, and she sent him a photograph in fencing team regalia.

“She looked so tall, I thought she was wearing heels, but I wanted a date,” he said.

They both were into sports: He played football, baseball and basketball, and she played basketball, tennis and field hockey.

“After our first date, I never dated another woman,” he said.

The couple married on Aug. 5, 1967, after having graduated from college. While he went on to UVA’s Darden School of Business for a masters degree, she taught 5th grade students in Charlottesville.

With the Vietnam draft looming, he enlisted in the Army, and the young family, now including 6-week-old Bryan, wound up in Fort Campbell, Kentucky, where he served as a chaplain’s assistant.

Once discharged, Bob founded a window replacement business in the Richmond, Virginia, area, and Lori eventually retired from teaching.

Now the parents of two sons and a daughter and grandparents to four, the couple moved to the Village to be closer to family in Irvine and San Clemente.

They both belong to Geneva Presbyterian Church, where they are members of the Mission Life Team, a group dedicated to helping people in need. Bob is also a member of the “The Rowdies,” a group of men who help with repairs at the church.

“We enjoy helping others,” Lori said. “Like putting together birthday bags for the Boys and Girls Club, and we also collect food donations at Stater Bros.”

They’re also members of the Lagna Woods Chicago Club and History Club, and pickleball is a passion.

It’s said that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

The couple’s daughter, Leigh Ann Weatherford, an English professor at Orange Coast College, and her husband, Christopher Pretto, a real estate professional, were married in 2005. “They met through Match.com,” said her parents, chuckling.