The Donkey Farmer’s Magical Matchmaking Book

In the era of online dating, one septuagenarian Irishman clings tight to a method passed down through the generations—and thousands of happy couples are luckier for it.

Photos by Julie Carr | Story edited by Brendan Spiegel

Willie Daly stands next to the pub’s roaring fire, giving precise instructions to the crowd gathered around him. When it’s your turn to touch the worn, yellowing, 160-year-old book, it’s important to close your eyes and really concentrate, Daly explains in his thick Irish accent. Both palms should make contact with the cover of the magical book for at least seven seconds. If you follow these steps, Daly continues, love has a way of finding you, sometimes rather quickly.

Anthony Denihan presses his palms to the book and immediately declares how warm it feels, which convinces him it’s working. “My hands are tingly now,” he says.

This is far from Denihan’s first time relying on the book for luck in love. Originally from Ireland, Denihan now lives in Manhattan, and he’s come here, to the Black Rabbit pub in Brooklyn, for a special event with Daly, a traditional Irish matchmaker he’s turned to many times before. For the past 20 years, Denihan has traveled back to County Clare in Ireland every single summer to take part in the Lisdoonvarna Matchmaking Festival. Thousands of singles flock to the otherwise quiet village in western Ireland for music and the prospect of finding love. One of the festival’s main draws is Daly, who sets up a makeshift office in one of the village pubs, where unmarried men and women can come to seek out his services.

Between Denihan’s many trips to the festival, plus sessions with Daly when the matchmaker visits the States, Denihan says that over the past two decades he’s been introduced to many wonderful women and jumpstarted several romantic relationships as a result. So, even though he hasn’t met that special one he’d like to marry, he’s a believer in Daly and his sacred scroll.

Daly, for his part, has been at this matchmaking game for nearly six decades. As a teenager, for fun, he’d nudge people together who he thought had some kind of spark. By the time he was in his 20s, he’d followed in the professional-matchmaking footsteps of his father and grandfather. Now in his 70s, Daly estimates that he has matched upward of 3,000 couples.

Daly resides an ocean away from New York, in Ennistymon, a town near the coast in County Clare. Apart from a few markets, bookstores and pubs that host traditional musicians, the area is mostly blanketed by rich farmlands. Daly lives on a farm there, where he raises horses, cows, donkeys and lambs. His eight children are all grown (the matchmaker himself is twice divorced), and various family members can usually be found on the property, working on the land or just popping by for a visit.