Woman Who Found Soulmate on Second Tinder Try Offers Love Advice

Online dating may be a headache for many, but for 30-year-old Katie Eadeh of Brisbane, Australia, it was actually the fast track to finding the man of her dreams.

Eadeh says she “wasn’t even looking for a date” and “never wanted to get married” when her friends urged her to join Tinder, according to the Mirror. After a few unsavory interactions with potential suitors, she was turned off and deleted the app from her phone. “Then, about two weeks later, I thought I’d have another look. It was literally my second time on Tinder,” she told publication. That was when she was taken by the “incredibly kind eyes and the greatest smile I’ve ever seen,” all of which belonged to Mike Cook, 34, a plumber.

So she swiped right, and the two matched. The two talked on the phone for two hours to get to know each other, then Cook asked her to go out on Friday. But he was clearly already smitten, as he asked to have a pre-date on Thursday, before their first actual date. Finally, Cook took Eadeh on their first “proper” date to “a little tapas place in Mackay.”

They clicked and spoke on the phone every day after that date. An intense courtship ensued. After a year and a half of dating — and a spontaneous move on Cook’s part from Canberra to Brisbane, so he could live closer to his sweetheart — Cook proposed to Eadeh, a senior account executive, in the same place where they had their first date, according to the publication. They were married last month in a festival-style wedding, with their dog, Lola, serving as flower girl.

The couple went on a three-week honeymoon to Sri Lanka, and Eadeh demonstrated the importance of friendship in a relationship by telling the Mirror that there’s no one else she would have rather traveled to South Asia with.

It all seems so simple, right? Well, according to Eadeh, it is — as long as you use your time judiciously and have the ability to recognize a good partner when you meet him. “Mike was traveling all around Australia working, so would often surprise me on a Friday afternoon and just show up at my workplace to tell me he’d just driven from Darwin, a three-day drive, to surprise me for the weekend. He would fly in from Canberra, Sydney, the Gold Coast, wherever,” Eadeh told the Mirror. Although she says she had emotional “walls” up, she let them down as she realized she deserved a man as devoted as Cook. “When I saw how much effort he was putting into me, I saw how genuine he was and that he was serious about me,” she said.

She told the publication that as Cook persisted, it became a ”very fun time” in her life, and through personal growth she gradually realized Cook was becoming her best friend. Now she wants to help other single-and-looking women follow in her footsteps toward happiness, so she’s sharing her advice with the world.

“My advice to someone on a dating site or Tinder would be to find someone that you can be friends with,” Eadeh said to the Mirror. “Someone who makes you laugh and who puts in the effort. There’s no point being with someone if you can’t even be friends first. That’s the basis of a lasting relationship. That, and honesty and communication.”

She also advises being smart about how you date in general. “There are less than savory people, whether you’re online or not,” she told the Mirror. “You need to use your better judgement, just like if you met someone in a club. The next time you agree to meet, you go out for a coffee, a drink, dinner, etc.” She adds, “I would never suggest inviting someone back to your home before you know them. But that’s just common sense and you can’t blame Tinder for that. The idea is to see someone you like the look/sound of, then talk to them, see if they can hold a stimulating conversation and go from there.”

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