This 66-Year-Old Texan Is Looking For Love Via Billboard

If you happen to be driving near Austin, you might see this advertisement for “a good woman for talks and walks and mutual acts of kindness.”

byKristin V. Shaw|
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Watch out, Tinder, Bumble, and the Tesla dating app, because Jim Bays of Texas is catching a lot of attention for his analog solution to finding dates: a billboard.

Bays, who moved to Texas from Washington in June of this year, is 66 and has no patience for swiping right. Or left. Or whatever. He’s a spec builder and contractor and works long days, so he doesn’t want to mess with complicated search methods. Bays decided to place a billboard with the headline "Wanted: A good woman, 50-55ish, for talks & walks & mutual acts of kindness" and his photo in large format and is hoping for the best. 

He set up a number for interested parties to call, which sounds like a prank call waiting to happen. Perhaps surprisingly, at last count the bachelor told Austin television station KXAN that he has received at least two dozen legitimate inquiries as a result.

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Local Tito's Handmade Vodka-owned site Austonia reported that Bays has been divorced twice (his second marriage lasted 19 years) and has five children ranging in age from 12 to 41. Dating apps have left him cold and “didn’t accurately portray the other party’s personality” so he came up with his own method to find love.

“I'm glad that I've done it and believe me, it made my knees knock together,” Bays told Austonia. “I'm thinking about my picture on a billboard knowing full well that I'm going to get a complete range of phone calls.”

While it might be easy to poke fun at the man for his quest, I think it’s pretty creative. And who knows? I have several friends who found the loves of their lives online, some who made the initial connection at bars, and both my parents and in-laws met on a blind date.  The first time I laid eyes on my now-husband, I had just pulled his name from a fishbowl during a contest at our annual sales conference for work.

Bays says he wants “somebody that has a shoulder where I can just lay my head down or a lap that I can lay my head down. Somebody who says, ‘Don't worry, you're going to get through this. It'll be fine.’ I'd love to find somebody like that.”

Don’t we all.

Got a tip? Comment below or send a note to kristin.shaw@thedrive.com.

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