Consider it their love language.
Couples are saying adios to dating apps in favor of searching for l’amour toujours on Duolingo — a language learning app that allows you to connect with more than 9 million daily users.
One couple, Rob Ciesielski and Amanda Lopez, used the program to kindle a long-distance admiration for one another, the Wall Street Journal reported this week.
Ciesielski, 43, of Washington, D.C., was learning Spanish, whereas Lopez, 38, of the Philippines, had been studying Mandarin.
Lopez soon began excelling with the foreign language, even appearing on Duolingo’s leaderboards. By 2021, Ciesielski started following and congratulating her on stellar advances. It got to the point where Lopez did some online sleuthing and looked Ciesielski up on Facebook.
They began messaging one another and were soon video chatting up to 25 hours a week and watching movies remotely. Putting their linguistic skills to good use, they began writing love poetry to each other as well.
A year later, Ciesielski journeyed to the Philippines and met Lopez in person. They wed the following month, and Lopez is awaiting a visa so she can move to D.C.
The groom insists that their unorthodox meeting will soon become standard measure, as people will connect “on every single app that exists.”
“On Uber Eats or whatever,” Ciesielski adds. “It’s just bound to happen.”
He’s right. Duolingo is just one of several non-dating apps with a matchmaking function.
Some are using Strava — a running app where individuals can compare their progress and routes to those nearby — as a way to get their foot in the door with a potential suitor.
“I was always so hesitant to do traditional dating apps…it’s just such a wide net,” Courtney Hollingsworth, who met and still flirts with her boyfriend Peter Krzywosz through the app, told the Journal.
It seems that the modern crowd is catching on to a practice that dates back years.
Las Vegas-based Terri Russell, 55, and Mel Chiong, 48, connected over Yelp thanks to a macaron bakery review Russell posted in 2012.
They got married in 2018.
“I never thought it was a resource for finding love,” Russell told the Journal.