Mary Timby was fed up with dating apps when she booked a trip to Ireland on a whim last summer – from the comfort of her Colorado couch. The spur-of-the-moment trip was unlike her: Timby, 39, is a self-described “total planner”. But she’d always wanted to visit Ireland, and she found herself exhausted by the local dating scene while navigating a career transition. And then she remembered a few throwaway lines from a comedy series about a matchmaking festival in Ireland.
So she looked it up – and not only was the Lisdoonvarna Matchmaking Festival real, it was also taking place during the entire month of September, when she was scheduled to visit. Now, a little more than a year later, Timby is reaping the benefits of that uncharacteristic last-minute decision: She’s become a viral star. She’s found love with an Irishman she met at a pub called The Matchmaker. And she’s even started a new business venture – bringing others to Lisdoonvarna who hope to follow in her footsteps.
“It’s really about enjoying County Clare, enjoying the festival, and, if you meet someone, you do – and that’s what happened with us,” says Timby, smiling at her partner, Jason Mangan, sitting beside her. They’re speaking from the windswept coastal cottage they rented together for the summer in his native County Clare – about 20 miles (32 km) southwest of Lisdoonvarna, the site of their first fortuitous meeting. From the outset, Timby’s inaugural Ireland trip seemed to take on a life of its own. She filmed a short video on the plane before her flight took off, telling her approximately 300 TikTok followers that she was heading on an off-the-cuff trip to an Irish matchmaking festival – and didn’t “know what’s going to happen”.
Timby then “turned my phone on airplane mode, then spent about eight hours on the flight (and) woke up at Shannon Airport,” she says. When she turned on her phone, “it was blowing up”. A group of friends had texted her. “They said, ‘Mary, your video is going viral,'” she says.
“I didn’t even have notifications on for social media.” She rented a manual transmission car – horrified to find the gear stick on the left side of the driver’s seat – and set off through County Clare to her accommodation at an Irish family’s home. Then she headed to Lisdoonvarna, where she saw firsthand that the festival is a whole-town, month-long celebration of conversation and dancing, rather than a line of singles waiting to be set up by a sage local matchmaker. That’s changed since the festival’s origins 170 years ago, when bachelor farmers and moneyed visitors would flock to the spa town of Lisdoonvarna to bathe in its mineral-rich waters and socialise. Generations of matchmakers would ply their trade to set up successful marriages, and word spread.
Now, while the town’s year-round residents number fewer than 1,000, that number swells up to 80,000 each September as revellers descend upon Lisdoonvarna from around the world. Third-generation matchmaker Willie Daly still holds court at his nearby home and at festival events, and Timby even visited him during her trip – when he put her on the phone to random men whose accents she struggled to understand. But the real magic of contemporary Lisdoonvarna lies in the town’s overflowing streets and pubs – as Timby soon found out. Her first night in town was “a little slow,” she admits – and Timby was tired and jet-lagged.
She retired to her room and spent the next day sightseeing, but the Irish woman running her accommodation convinced her to try Lisdoonvarna again that night. “My AirBnB host said, ‘You should go back tonight, because I heard that the younger folks come out at night,'” laughs Timby. So she did – and found herself dancing and drinking pints at The Matchmaker Bar in the centre of town. That’s when a “handsome Irishman” approached her.
“I went over and introduced myself, and… conversation just flowed,” says Mangan, 38, from Ennis, County Clare, about 22 miles southeast of Lisdoonvarna. He’d been to the festival before and was well-acquainted with its cultural significance, remembering his grandparents making the journey decades earlier for the dancing. “Unfortunately, I didn’t have much time on my hands, because I was turning back to Ennis,” says Mangan, designated driver that night for a group of friends. “So I got her name, and I said, ‘Oh, sure, I might see you around.’ “It was a very short interaction, to be honest with you.” He didn’t leave it at that, though; Mangan found Timby on Instagram and followed up with a message inviting her out.
“It was short and sweet, and it was really genuine, too,” says Timby – and she took him up on the offer. What followed was a series of whirlwind dates – lunches, dinners, sightseeing and shopping trips. Timby extended her time in Ireland and documented much of it for her newfound following – but she didn’t reveal anything about her new beau. They wanted to save the burgeoning romance for themselves.
When Timby eventually had to fly home, there were “tears at the airport” – but they decided to keep the relationship going. “It was very tough to say goodbye,” Timby says. “It was very tough to start a long-distance relationship, but it ended up being a really good opportunity for us to sort of slow things down a bit.” They kept talking daily, Mangan impatiently waiting for Timby to wake up seven hours behind him in Colorado. She flew back to Ireland again, then he made his first trip to America for Thanksgiving 2025.
Timby returned to Ireland at Christmas and met his family, and after that, they decided to make her boyfriend’s big social media reveal. “We thought, this is something we already know we want to invest in… we were ready to share,” Timby says. “So New Year’s Eve, we shared a photo of him, and people were just over-the-moon excited.” The pair watched their following grow, drawing interest from Irish cafes and tourist destinations to the local Gaelic sports club in Colorado. Their story also caught the attention of Lisdoonvarna locals, who approached Timby – a communications consultant – about being an ambassador for the festival.
“So I said: Sign me up,” Timby laughs. “I love the festival. It brought me Jay.” Timby’s been inundated with messages from lovelorn followers hoping to replicate her matchmaking success. “I heard from many of my followers… groups of people wanting to go to the festival but not having anyone to go with” or “not knowing what to do,” Timby says.
“I really listened to that, and I also wanted to be mindful of the fact that I love Ireland. “I’m so excited to showcase County Clare and all the amazing things that the west coast of Ireland has, but I’m also not a tour operator.” So she partnered with a company called Met Through Friends, which organises and encourages real-life meetups for people looking for love. They released an interest form for a trip, expecting “80 to 100 responses.” They received 560. The first group of eight will make the trip later this month, with Timby’s Irish boyfriend consulting on the itinerary.
“You can go on all these apps, swipe left, swipe right, but it’s not actually going out and making a connection with someone and experiencing a small little town in Ireland, experiencing the culture,” says Mangan. “It’s a once-in-a-lifetime experience… you never know.” Timby, smiling at her boyfriend of one year, agrees. “I echo everything Jay just said,” she says. “Put your phone down and put yourselves out there, and good things will come.” Women are hiding their boyfriends online and there’s more than one reason why Does your relationship have a swag gap, and is that always a bad thing?
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