Andrea McGinty: The Matchmaker Behind It’s Just Lunch

Who Is Andrea McGinty?

Andrea McGinty is an American entrepreneur, dating strategist, author and matchmaking industry veteran best known as the founder of It’s Just Lunch.

She studied accounting at John Carroll University, but her professional direction changed after a deeply personal experience. In her early twenties, her fiancé ended their engagement just weeks before their planned wedding. According to McGinty's own account, that experience eventually inspired her to think differently about how single people could meet.

Her idea was not to create another dating club.

She imagined something closer to an executive recruiter for someone's personal life: a service where someone could explain what they were looking for, have another person assess potential compatibility, and then be introduced to an appropriate match. That concept became It’s Just Lunch.

McGinty built the business during a period when there was no Google, no dating apps and no large-scale online dating ecosystem. The process was almost entirely human. Clients relied on personal introductions, telephone conversations, local networking and the judgment of matchmakers to navigate the dating process. Building a large matchmaking operation meant creating systems for meeting, understanding and connecting people long before digital platforms made those tasks easier to scale. In many ways, the model depended on something that remains central to matchmaking today: knowing the people involved rather than simply processing their profiles.

Andrea McGinty — At a Glance

* The numbers above should be understood as self-reported professional figures, rather than independently audited industry statistics.

From a Broken Engagement to It’s Just Lunch

McGinty's entry into matchmaking was personal before it was professional.

She has said that her fiancé called off their wedding only weeks before the ceremony. After the initial shock, she began thinking about the larger problem she had encountered: if successful, busy adults wanted relationships, where could they actually go to meet people in a meaningful way?

The dating options available at the time were very different from today's. There were bars, parties, personal introductions, newspaper advertisements and small local matchmakers. There was no enormous searchable database of singles sitting inside a smartphone.

McGinty saw an opportunity.

Her concept was essentially an executive-search model applied to dating. A professional would learn about the client, identify potential matches and arrange an introduction. And there was one important detail: the introduction did not need to become a complicated evening. It could simply be lunch. It’s Just Lunch.

The simplicity was part of the appeal. The date itself was not supposed to carry the pressure of a formal romantic evening. Two people could sit down, talk and decide whether there was enough interest to meet again.

The concept arrived at an interesting moment: professional singles were becoming increasingly time-poor, but the internet had not yet transformed dating. McGinty was effectively creating a human matchmaking infrastructure before technology could do it at scale.

How It’s Just Lunch Became a Major Matchmaking Company

The small Chicago concept grew into a much larger matchmaking operation. Instead of functioning as a single local matchmaker, It’s Just Lunch developed a network of locations and professional matchmakers serving singles in multiple markets.

A local matchmaker can know hundreds of people personally. A large matchmaking company has to create systems for collecting information, screening clients, managing introductions and maintaining enough of a dating pool in each market.

It’s Just Lunch's model attempted to industrialize the human introduction without making the experience entirely impersonal.

One of the interesting aspects of the It’s Just Lunch story is that the business was built around a premise that remains recognizable today: people often need help filtering the dating pool more than they need access to an even larger one.

That question would become even more relevant once dating moved online.

The Matchmaker in the Oprah Era

As It’s Just Lunch expanded, McGinty also became a recognizable media figure.

Her expertise made her a natural source for journalists and television programs covering dating, relationships and matchmaking. Her current biography lists appearances and coverage involving Oprah, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, People, Forbes and other major outlets.

Her connection with The Oprah Winfrey Show became an especially important part of her professional story.

McGinty has described Oprah as one of the major moments in her media career, and today she continues to reference her appearance on the show as part of her professional background.

The significance was bigger than television exposure.

At the time, professional matchmaking could still seem unusual to people who had never considered paying someone to help them date. Appearing in mainstream media helped bring the concept into a much broader conversation.

McGinty's public role therefore became closely connected to the growing acceptance of professional dating services.

The basic message was straightforward: if people hire professionals to find employees, homes, financial advice or travel experiences, why couldn't they hire someone to help them navigate their personal lives?

That idea would become increasingly familiar as the matchmaking industry developed.

Andrea McGinty Reviews: What Do People Say?

There are two different things worth separating when researching Andrea McGinty: reviews of McGinty herself and reviews of It’s Just Lunch as a company.

They are not necessarily the same thing.

It’s Just Lunch has operated for decades and across many markets, meaning customer experiences can vary depending on location, matchmaker, dating pool and individual expectations.

The current It’s Just Lunch website presents testimonials from clients who describe the process as comfortable, convenient and focused on meeting in person.

At the same time, consumer-review platforms contain a mixture of positive and negative experiences concerning the company. That broader review history is an important context when evaluating the brand.

A review of a matchmaking service also needs to be interpreted differently from a review of a restaurant or physical product. The outcome depends heavily on personal compatibility, local availability and the client's expectations.

For that reason, a collection of reviews can show patterns in customer experiences, but it cannot establish whether a particular matchmaking service will produce a relationship for an individual.

The bigger takeaway is that McGinty's career has lasted long enough to generate an unusually large body of real-world matchmaking experience.

Andrea McGinty's Business Philosophy

McGinty's current philosophy can be summarized by a phrase she uses repeatedly:

"Love isn't luck. It's strategy."

The statement captures how her thinking has evolved.

She does not describe successful dating as simply a matter of waiting for the right person to appear. Instead, she emphasizes choices, communication, compatibility, presentation and learning from experience.

In a recent article, she identifies several recurring principles from her career, including the idea that compatibility can matter more than chemistry, dating is a skill that can be improved, and people often need refinement rather than complete reinvention.

There is also a strong practical element to her approach.

McGinty frequently talks about the mechanics of dating: photographs, profiles, messages, timing, dating platforms and how quickly people move from online communication to real-world meetings.

That is consistent with the business she built in the 1990s.

Whether she was arranging a lunch date for a client or helping someone choose the right dating app, the underlying question remained similar:

How can we make the process of meeting the right people more intentional?

That may be the clearest thread connecting the two stages of her career.

It’s Just Lunch Today

More than three decades after Andrea McGinty founded it, It’s Just Lunch continues to operate as a matchmaking service for busy professionals, emphasizing personal introductions and face-to-face dates rather than relying entirely on dating apps.

McGinty is no longer running the company. After selling It’s Just Lunch to private equity, she shifted her attention toward online dating strategy and coaching through 33000Dates.com.

There is something fitting about that transition. It’s Just Lunch was created to help people navigate dating before the internet transformed the way singles meet. McGinty's later work helps people navigate the opposite problem: an online dating world with almost too many choices.

The technology changed, but the underlying challenge remained the same — helping two people who might be compatible actually meet.