During much of her single life, Dr. Karen Kienker kept a diary of her dating experiences.

One of the worst was the time she and her date couldn’t even agree on the correct way to dip a chip.

“I thought you should do it vertically, and he insisted that the correct way was to scoop horizontally,” Kienker said with a laugh.

These days, Kienker has less juicy material for her diary. Two years ago, she signed up for a local online dating service, Selective Singles, and within a week, found the man to whom she’s now been married for over a year.

For Kienker, a physician who specializes in physical medicine and rehabilitation, the personality test used by Selective Singles was the key to finding her husband, Chad Roush.

“When we started talking, we both found we were easygoing, and that we like to try to help people,” said Kienker.

It didn’t matter to Kienker that her future husband’s job at the time was stocking shelves at Wal-mart.

“He said he worked at Wal-mart, and I thought, ‘OK, maybe he’s the manager,’” she said. “Then he told me that, and I thought, ‘Oh, OK, that’s not a big deal.’”

Research conducted by online dating service Match.com indicates that two-thirds of single adults surveyed consider online relationship sites to be an “efficient way” to meet many potential dates and that they reduce the time it traditionally takes to meet compatible people. The study also found that most single people are interested in expanding their social circles and understand that building a lasting relationship takes work.

It’s also becoming more likely for singles to be seniors. There are now 14.9 million unmarried Americans aged 65 and older. People aged 50 and older represent the fastest-growing segment of the Match.com client base, and according to a Nielsen NetRatings survey, more than 1.6 million men and women aged 65-plus visited online personal advertising sites.

Dave Hurd’s name invariably comes up whenever matchmaking is mentioned. A retired CEO and chairman of Principal Financial Group Inc., Hurd and his wife, Barb, met five years ago through a newspaper personal ad. Before that, though, he said he briefly tried one of the early online dating services.

“I put down the criteria, ‘must live within 20 miles of downtown Des Moines,’ and the first response I got was from a city in Israel,” Hurd said. “So I thought, ‘That’s not going to go anywhere.’”

Hurd said he was “somewhat astonished” at the number of calls he got – 20 – in response to the ad he placed in The Des Moines Register: “Retired executive, widower, trim athlete, culturally and politically active with wide interests, seeking equally trim, active, intelligent soul mate, age 50 to 70.”

“I met most of the 20,” he said. “We went out for coffee, or maybe went to coffee and dinner then decided it wasn’t working out. It was a matter of working your way through. It was hard work.”

He and Barb met at Java Joe’s Coffeehouse, and the rest is history.

“Without doing it through the newspaper ad, we never would have met,” he said. “She lived in West Des Moines and I lived in Des Moines. I think that using that service gave me a much larger pool of possibilities.”

More online dating sites are catering to executives with six-figure incomes.

One example is a site launched in December 2004 by Art Space, an organization for artists. (www.artspace2000.com/executive_match. The Manitoba-based company charges a $1,000 membership fee and conducts extensive background verification checks, said co-founder Pat Watters.

“People don’t have time to waste on someone who, for lack of a better word, is a goober,” she said. “This is our way of guaranteeing that you are speaking to someone who is reliable. We turn down a lot of people who are just trying to have fun.”

The site, which as of yet is unadvertised and attracting visitors by word-of-mouth, has about eight clients in Central Iowa, she said.

Watters’ biggest caveat for people considering online dating is to be cautious about giving out personal information, and to carefully verify that the site is legitimate before dealing with it. “I’m amazed at how many people sign up with us without calling to check us out,” she said.

Judy Cowher, operations director of Destiny Date Iowa, said her business is used by those with computers as well as older people who don’t use computers and stop in personally to register and review profiles of prospective matches. She sees a wide variety of people.

“I would say there are just as many blue collars as there white collars, because we’re in Iowa,” she said. “But when a white collar comes in, they’re not necessarily looking for a white collar. Sometimes someone comes in saying, ‘I want someone with a master’s degree,’ but they may find someone with a high school diploma and they’re head over heels for them.’”

For Kienker, finding someone who was compatible and with whom she could avoid conflict was important.

“In other relationships I had there was a lot of conflict,” she said. With Roush, “I think in two years we’ve only had two arguments.

“Even my family likes him,” she added. “They never really liked anyone else I went out with.”