Some single professionals across Montgomery County are reckoning with one tough question as they search for love: “How do you feel about Robert F. Kennedy Jr.?”

“That’s one we have to ask,” said Molly Dresner, a professional matchmaker. “Which is only relevant in D.C.,” quipped Ali Deckelbaum, Dresner’s partner.

Deckelbaum and Dresner are cutting to the core of their clients’ wants and desires in a region where political affiliation is as fundamental as long-term family plans.

The duo of Montgomery County residents, both 36, became friends at Potomac’s Bullis School and created a matchmaking service, The Court, in May 2024.

They don’t stop random attractive people they run into on the street (as made popular in media such as the 2025 film “Materialists”). They match singles from their in-house roster of vetted clients. Why they say their service works may be even simpler: Swiping stinks.

“They have swipe fatigue. They’re burnt out,” Deckelbaum said of daters.

“Most people who are coming to us are ready to date in real life,” Dresner added inside Tatte in downtown Bethesda, where they meet many of their clients.

“People really feel this bizarre pressure to find this needle in a haystack, and it makes me sad for the anxiety around that.”

Clients often would rather work with them, the pair said, because dating apps create a world of unrealistic expectations. It’s part of what inspired them to make The Court, a matchmaking service that puts prospective daters through the paces of typical first-date questions before pairing them.

The matchmakers met their husbands through mutual friends, or what they affectionately call “out in the wild.” And they want folks to return to that in-person approach rather than thumbing through a menu of potential dates.

Dresner and Deckelbaum work with 25- to 55-year-olds, split nearly 40%/60% between men and women. Their clientele includes people who come from different races, have never married, are formerly married, have kids or don’t.

Forty-three percent of their clients live in Montgomery County. They have only cisgender men and women looking for heterosexual relationships on their roster, but they said they hope to work with the LGBTQ+ community soon.

Wannabe hikers

Some dating truisms apply to both The Court and the customizable apps.

“Aesthetics are still the No. 1 deal-breaker,“ Dresner said.

Men want an “active” partner. “Which we usually read as skinny,” Dresner said.

Women like their men at least 6 feet tall.

Clients say they like certain hobbies or want their future partner to like them. But, when the matchmakers press evenly lightly, those desires prove flimsy.

“When people say hiking,” Deckelbaum said, she asks: “Tell me your last hike.”

Dresner interjected. “I would like to know.”

“It’s really code for: I don’t have a lot of hobbies,” Deckelbaum resumed. “Which is OK!”

“Most of the time,” Dresner said, “it’s you like walking around D.C.”

That, they assure their clients, is a perfectly fine hobby that will suit many possible partners.

They estimate they’ve made “in the triple digits” worth of matches in less than two years. But, given the nature of people’s active commitment to dating and relationships, their total number of clients is squishy, they said.

Justin + Jessica

One of their successes matched Rockville residents Justin Kramer and Jessica Kuney.

Dating apps annoyed them. Kramer, 45, heard about the The Court through a mutual friend and signed up not long after the service launched. He went on a date with one match made by Deckelbaum and Dresner but declined two others. Kramer went out with Kuney in October 2024 and after that first date told friends there might be a spark there.

Kuney, 43, wasn’t sure if there would be a second date. She texted Deckelbaum and Dresner about Kramer and asked whether he was interested in her — because he said he would call her and hadn’t yet. That opportunity to bounce her thoughts off the matchmakers, she said, was why she preferred them to online or speed dating.

“I was just very set on being out there face to face rather than being on a screen,” Kuney said.

That second date finally happened. Then another. Now they live together and co-parent two cats.

“You have to be open to meeting people that may not ...” she trailed off. “Justin and I are the same height. Five years ago, I wouldn’t have wanted to do that, right?”

That openness to the many possibilities of love is what Deckelbaum and Dresner are trying to emphasize with their clients. Some of it is basic decency. Don’t ghost your dates. But, for anyone looking to be partnered next Valentine’s Day, get out in the world, whether that’s a workout class or a book club, they said.

Take Dresner herself. She described a hypothetical about her own marriage she sometimes meditates upon.

If she had gone to a matchmaker, would her description of an ideal mate resemble her husband?

“Would I have described him?” she said. “I think values are the most important thing versus the superficials, right? His job, his height, his politics, all of that.”

But, given their own flexibility to clients, they wouldn’t blame you for drawing a hard line on RFK Jr.