In April, a Dallas Observer member reached out to us following a round of emails we sent thanking members for their continued support.
“Thanks for your email,” the message began. “FYI – I met my husband through a Dallas Observer personal ad 32 years ago! Way before internet dating. Regards, Nancy.”
For years, the Observer had a personal ad section where people could put a short dating profile in print issues, and interested suitors would respond. At first, interested parties would send letters, but eventually the system was replaced with voicemails.
Was it to keep up with the times? Yes. Was it also to stop people from sending strangers odd things in the mail? Maybe.
Either way, this was one of the dating options of the time that has since been replaced by the likes of Tinder and Hinge.
“I still have a copy of the ad which was listed in the Singles section under ‘Female Looking for Male’,” she wrote.
A Dallas Observer Love Story Begins
When Nancy Latner took out a personal ad in the Observer in 1993, she wanted to attract a successful man looking for a serious relationship. She was 37, had a successful career, and did not want to waste her time dating unserious men. Her friends told her to be careful. After all, you never know who might actually respond to your ad.
Latner didn’t think a personal ad was much different than meeting a stranger at a bar. Regardless of where you meet someone, you never really know who they actually are until you get to know them, right? At least with a personal ad, she could filter through a list of viable candidates. It was more efficient.
She wasn’t one for going out to bars in hopes of meeting someone, anyway. That crowd didn’t often include men she was interested in, and she knew what kind of man she was after.
She thought it would be fun to create a themed ad — an employer in search of an employee. She titled it “Executive Search” and wrote the ad to sound like a job listing in hopes of emphasizing that she was looking for a successful, professional man. It read:
“Selectively seeking intelligent, cultured, single white male, 35-45, 6’+. Benefits: Breakfasts in bed, moonlit jacuzzi, passionate kisses, surprises, laughter. Dress code: Preppy, great hair, devilish smile. Travel required: Romantic country inns, Caribbean beaches, European adventure. Smoke free environment. Employer: Sophisticated, curvaceous, 5’10”, Fortune 100 (though this was a typo and should have been ‘Fortune 500’), legs, green eyes, smile.”
She ran the ad for a few weeks, and interested men left her messages, which she used to listen and decide who she actually wanted to go out with.
Overall, Latner received 22 messages from suitors, and she narrowed it down to 13 who stood out from the pack the most.
Lucky number 13 was nearly a missed connection. It was the last day for Latner to pick up messages, and she nearly didn’t check her messages. How many people could have left a message for her on the last day?
In the end, she decided to, and was met with a lovely voice and a friendly message from a man named John.
She called him back to set up a date, and they arranged to meet on Sunday, May 16, at 5 p.m. at Baby Routh – a former Dallas restaurant owned by chef Stephan Pyles. Hopefully, the bar would be empty before the dinner rush.
“What celebrity do you look like?” Latner asked over the phone. She needed to know how to recognize him. All she knew was that he had a nice voice, his name was John, and he seemed to fit the requirements in her ad. After all, a personal ad isn’t much more than a blind date.
“Richard Chamberlain,” he answered.
Luckily for her, not only was it easy to spot the tall, blonde-haired John McLellan in a crowd, but there was no crowd to find him in. He was the only one at the bar that evening.
“Oh, he’s very handsome,” she thought, walking up to the bar.
He wasn’t lying about his celebrity lookalike, and bonus points: he wasn’t lying about being over 6 feet tall. As a 5-foot-10-inch woman, Latner knew well the disappointment of men lying about their height.
McLellan was pleasantly surprised, too. His date claimed that she was a “sophisticated, curvaceous” woman with “legs, green eyes” and a Fortune 500 career, but that sounds too good to be true, right?
Wanderlust was a must – Latner's 1993 personal ad in the Observer required that her partner enjoy traveling to Caribbean beaches.
Courtesy Nancy Latner
Drinks turned into dinner, and “the rest is history, as they say,” Latner wrote. The two even got to have that “European adventure” Latner required in her ad, among many international adventures.
“I joined him on numerous business trips, including to London, Geneva, Hong Kong, Beijing and Edinburgh,” she told us.
After years of partnership, McLellan proposed to Latner on New Year’s Eve of 1999, just minutes before the start of the new millennium.
“People started to clap,” Latner wrote. “And the wait staff came out, banging pots [and] pans in celebration of New Year’s a few minutes early, we think, because they heard the clapping for us."
In 2001, they were married and honeymooned in Nevis, an island in the Caribbean. Of course, this checked off another requirement from the ad: “Caribbean beaches.” In the same year, they bought a house in Preston Hollow, where they still reside today.
This month marked exactly 32 years since John and Nancy met through the pages of our paper.
Courtesy Nancy Latner
Thank you to Nancy and John for sharing their story with us. We’re touched that local journalism and the Observer have made such a lasting impact on your life.
Do you have a Dallas Observer love connection? Share it with us for a chance to be featured: [email protected].
