There was no way Kellie Davie, 29, owner of Keycom PR, thought that she would find her forever mate though online dating. And certainly not through the Tinder app, notorious for hair-trigger rejection or casual hookups.
But she had just moved back to Nashville after losing her job and ending a serious relationship in Knoxville, so she was at least open to trying something new.
“I was at this crossroads,” says the publicist who was then Kellie Keyes. “I called it my quarter-life crisis where I was ready for a change.”
A colleague at Omni Hotel, where Davie worked as the marketing manager, thought Tinder was a great source of entertainment, filled with a cast of characters that ranged from self-involved to outrageous and everything in between.
It was 2013, and Tinder had just been founded in Los Angeles in 2012.
“It was always fun and kind of goofy to look at,” Davie adds. “But that’s not me. I always met people organically, so I thought, ‘I’m not going to find true love on an app, let’s be real.’”
But her friend took her phone, downloaded the app and set up Kellie’s profile. She decided to keep it on her phone – just for fun – and she and her friend would be able to compare swipes.
Then someone caught her eye for real.
“I came across Alex’s picture and I just thought he was so handsome,” she says. “We had a lot of the same interests, because it connects to your Facebook profile, and one of our favorite shows is “Doctor Who” on BBC, so I thought that was really cool. I swiped yes.”
Alex Davie had already been on a few Tinder dates after going through a divorce and wasn’t really looking for anything serious either when he swiped right on her profile. Once they were a match, they began to exchange messages and realized they both worked downtown, where he owns his own law firm, Riggs Davie PLC.
Her colleague definitely approved, and they made plans to meet at the now-closed Pub 5, though a few friends joked that she might be getting “catfished” – when you think you are meeting one person and someone totally different shows up.
This was her first Tinder date, and she says she went into it with an open mind and absolutely no expectations.
“I figured if you build it up, you’re going to get disappointed,” she acknowledges. “If it isn’t a good time, then you didn’t really lose anything, except your time. But I did tell my friends, if you don’t hear from me in 24 hours, you better report me.”
Kellie and Alex Davie had the type of Tinder experience the app’s marketers dream of. “But,” Kellie says, “I did tell my friends, if you don’t hear from me in 24 hours, you better report me.”
-- Michelle Morrow | The LedgerBut Alex looked exactly like his picture, much to Kellie’s relief and delight. She could tell when he saw her he was just as relieved she wasn’t catfishing him, either.
“We instantly hit it off,” she says. “It was one of those really strange, yet surreal things that you feel like you’ve known the person for a long time, but you just met them. We had so much in common too, not just our interests. We were both only children. We had similar interests and tastes.”
One drink became two drinks, and then they headed over to RuSan’s in The Gulch, also now closed, for sushi and continued to talk for hours. They both really opened up about their past relationships, including his divorce.
“I really appreciated that he was very honest with me from the beginning,” she adds.
Alex called her a few days later and asked her out for a proper date to Arrington Vineyards. He picked her up from her apartment and had packed a picnic. They got a bottle of wine, sat on the patio, and he kissed her for the first time while they enjoyed the sunset.
“I told all my girlfriends the next day I felt like I was on an episode of The Bachelor,” she jokes.
Alex proposed to Kellie on Valentine’s Day morning 2015 when he taped a message to the bottom of her morning cup of coffee that asked, “Will You Marry Me?” They were married eight months later at the Hermitage, and last fall celebrated their two-year wedding anniversary with a trip to Iceland.
“He is my best friend and just my everything,” she says. “He is the reason I started my agency. He believed in me and I would have never taken this leap of faith to start my own company if I didn’t have his support and encouragement.”
Tinder currently registers 1.6 billion swipes a day and helps facilitate 1 million dates a week in 196 countries.
Match.com is touted as the original dating site, launched in 1995 and considered at the time to be a very new – and potentially dangerous – way to meet people.
Today, more than half of the 100 million single Americans have tried online dating or dating apps. And in 2017, the internet was the No. 1 place for singles to meet. Only 14 percent now meet through friends, and 6 percent met at bars.
And it certainly worked for Kellie and Alex.
“He is a partner in all sense of the word partner,” she says. “Romantically, friendship and just really supporting my career. We’ve always supported each other’s dreams. We just want each other to be happy, and we want to contribute to our family and its growth.”