High-Tech Hookup

High School's Computer Finds 'Soul Mates'

(CBS)  Call it the high-tech hookup. For a small price, a student can find out who in his school is his ideal mate. While it's mainly just for fun, schools are finding that it can be profitable and sometimes it is prophetic. CBS News Correspondent Tracy Smith explained in a report from last February.

Taking a peek inside Kevin Recker's American History class at Sayville High School in New York and you would hardly know it's Valentine's season.

But at the door, a small sales pitch for a service called DataMatch is displayed. It offers students the chance to find true love.

The idea is simple. Kids fill out forms, answering all sorts of questions — from, "Can you spell?" to "Are you ticklish?"

A computer calculates which students in the school of more than 1,000 are most compatible. At lunchtime, under Recker's supervision, students from the National Honor Society offer the answers for $2 a piece.

For most kids, the lists are more for laughs than love.

It does seem silly that a computer could somehow determine your soul mate. But more than a decade ago, a simple computer printout ended up holding one woman's future.

"I didn't date much in high school," says Recker's wife, Ellen. "I wasn't ready."

Ellen Recker, then Ellen Brady, was a senior at Sayville High School, and was more into academics than affairs of the heart. But on a whim, she got a DataMatch.

"I did it just for fun," says Brady. "I wasn't looking for someone who I could go and say, 'You're on my list. Can we date?' … It was just more of a fun activity for me."

The guy at the top of her list was someone Brady already had a crush on, but he just wanted to be friends.

"I knew how he felt," says Brady. "I knew he didn't feel the same way."

They stayed friends for years, and about a decade after a computer found Ellen a soulmate, that classmate came to the same conclusion and they were married.

The person at the top of her computer matchup list? Kevin Recker.