INSPIRING STORIES

Swipe Right for True Love

Tales of couples who found more than romance on Tinder.

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An estimated 1 million dates happen each week thanks to the Tinder app. It’s responsible for countless friendships, marriages, and births—and among them, many inspiring tales of love. Here are a few of the most endearing.

A perfect match

Lori Interlicchio and Alana Duran

Diagnosed with lupus when she was a child, and in need of a kidney transplant, Alana Duran, 25, could not have imagined how fellow New Yorker Lori Interlicchio, 22, would change her life when the two met on Tinder.

The happy couple had only been dating for a couple of months when Interlicchio revealed that she was a match as an organ donor. In early 2016, within a year of meeting, the two successfully underwent surgery.

“It’s so funny how things work out, both of us going into this relationship not expecting anything out of the ordinary,” Duran says. “Who knew when we both swiped right on Tinder that day we would be more than just girlfriends?”

“I’m down a kidney,” Interlicchio jokes, adding that her health “is probably the thing that has changed the least out of everything.”

The biggest difference now? “I wake up happy every day because I’m with the woman of my dreams.”

Life partners, business partners

Matt and Joanna Hofmann

“He had me at ‘tequila,’” says Joanna Hofmann, who met her husband, Matt, on Tinder in 2014, when she was 26 and he 31. Three months after getting matched, Joanna quit her job, packed up her belongings and her black Lab, and moved from L.A. to Santa Barbara, California, to live with him.

Today the couple, who were married in Mexico last year, own two businesses. Their current calling: bringing the Living Vehicle—a luxurious, beautifully designed 215-square-foot home-on-wheels—to market.

“We are both so passionate about our mission to provide a sustainable alternative to traditional housing and inspire people to live an intentional life,” she says.

The couple’s path has been anything but traditional. They have lived together in a renovated Airstream trailer, as well as on a customized houseboat docked in the Santa Barbara Harbor.

“Sharing the entrepreneurial spirit makes for a very exciting and often unpredictable life, and we're loving it.”

Self-discovery

Max Landwirth and Mark Vidal

When 21-year-old Max Landwirth came out in 2013, he was too intimidated to talk to other men in person. Twenty-five-year-old Mark Vidal—who is now engaged to Landwirth—was going through a similar experience.

“Prior to Tinder, we were on parallel coming-out paths. We’d both had previous long-term girlfriends and ended those relationships with the intention of living authentic lives,” says Landwirth. It was like we were learning how to date all over again.”

Neither had the courage or social skills to approach a potential love interest, he says, but the app eliminated their anxiety. “Tinder took away that first barrier of doubt and apprehension.”

Meeting each other has had broad repercussions, says Landwirth. “Even our relationships with family and friends have blossomed, because we are now able to fully be ourselves.” The couple look forward to tying the knot in June, surrounded by their loved ones.