Marisa Skolnick thought she would be married and starting a family by the time she was 35.
Instead, in 2020, when she was that age, she broke up with her long term boyfriend and decided to leave New York to work remotely in Los Angeles and Miami.
“I went off the grid,” Skolnick said.
In 2021, she returned to to the Big Apple determined to find Mr. Right. Her friends all seemed to be married and having kids, and she felt a bit left out. Three of her best buds and sorority sisters from Rutgers University — Liz Soleimani, Brooke Viggiano Fischer and Felice Guberman — had recently had babies and were deep in the mommy world. They offered to use the extensive network of the Moms of the Upper East Side Facebook group — a 22,000 member strong page where typical posts concern doulas, nannies for hire and diapers — to help Skolnick find love.
“Over the years we saw people putting little ads for their brothers or their sisters — sometimes you’d see follow ups, so I asked Marisa if she would be OK,” Soleimani told The Post.
Mom groups on Facebook and elsewhere are an old school, increasingly popular alternative to dating apps for those looking to find love and settle down. The website MaMa Knows Best invites mothers to match up the singles in their lives. Relationship expert Bela Gandhi, host of the Smart Dating Academy Podcast, says it’s becoming more common for moms in niche industry organizations, such as Physician Moms, to pitch their single friends among biz talk.
“Moms groups have become fertile ground for matchmaking,” said Gandhi. “When people ask me if they should do it, I say, ‘why not?’”
Skolnick, now 38 and a marketing executive, gave her gal pals permission to do as they pleased.
“I said, ‘Go have fun … give yourself something to do,’ ” she told The Post.
On Sept. 14, 2021, her wing-women posted a bio and photo of the 5’8″, dirty blonde beauty in a V-neck black blouse.
“We suck at making matchmaking profiles, but don’t let that reflect on how incredible she is,” Soleimani, 38, a Great Neck, Long Island-based stay-at-home mom wrote on Facebook. She went on to describe Skolnick as “the funniest person to be around,” ultra ambitious and family oriented with a “huge heart.” She said they were looking for a suitor who was “driven, kind, looking for a serious relationship and is taller than her.”
Soleimani was flooded with private messages in response, but only one stood out. A mom in the group, Jodi Kramer, 43, and a sales rep, sent a photo of her husband’s best friend, Matt Berson, 44. The brown-eyed Queens native had no kids, had never married, worked in finance and lived in Williamsburg with his golden doodle. Berson described himself as a “Chipwich influencer” on Instagram, a sweet pairing with Marisa’s marketing work with brands such as Snickers and M&Ms.
“We said, this is the match,” said Soleimani who vetted the photos and bios from potential suitors with Viggiano Fischer and Guberman.
Kramer was in agreement.
“I saw [Marisa’s] bio and I said to my husband, ‘This is Matt as a female,’” she recalled.
Berson and Skolnick had their first date on Sept. 17, 2021 at Japanese cocktail spot Bar Goto on the Lower East Side. Skolnick was instantly attracted to his chocolaty eyes and his sense of humor — he asked if she flossed as an excuse for a first kiss. The date lasted seven hours, with Berson tagging along to meet Skolnick’s friends at a bar before the duo had a late dinner at Beauty and Essex.
“Everything was just so easy and hilarious we just didn’t want the date to end,” Skolnick said. “I didn’t want to stop talking — he was the first person I was excited to be dating. He actually gave me the butterflies, which is corny and true.”
After the date ended, they texted non-stop while Berson was on a work trip to London. He was seeing someone at the time, but he went with his gut and broke it off. He and Skolnick had a whirlwind Hamptons weekend soon after.
They couple moved into Matt’s Williamsburg apartment last July after 10 months of dating. That same month he asked her to marry him in the middle of a rose shaped heart on the rooftop of their building. They tied the knot on Dec. 3 at a vineyard on the North Fork of Long Island with Kramer’s husband as their officiant. Currently, they’re honeymooning in Cambodia and the Maldives.
“He was the first date I went on out of all the Facebook suitors,” said Skolnick, who now goes by Berson, of her newlywed husband. “First and only date — I canceled the others.”