Life

The ‘Millionaire Matchmaker’ and the Jewish Mamele

By Debra Nussbaum Cohen December 6, 2010

Patti Stanger, the “Millionaire Matchmaker,” has moved to Manhattan, making her show is all the much more fun for us New Yawk Jewish girls to watch.

The first New York City-based episode aired in October (but can be seen in reruns on Bravo) and features not just a nice Italian guy from Staten Island who looks like an older Mark Wahlberg and sounds like someone on the Sopranos, but also a beautiful, young Jewish mamele named Bryce Gruber.

Gruber is a 26-year-old mother of a toddler son, and editor of TheLuxurySpot.com, a bloggy website that seems more fun than luxurious. Before her MM turn, Gruber may have been best known for “vajazzling” herself and letting it be documented in the press.

Gruber comes to The Millionaire’s Club looking for “a George Clooney type,” Stanger says. Well who isn’t?

The third-generation matchmaker sets Gruber up with an adorable, tall Jewish guy but Gruber, who seems to be painfully snobby, just shuts the guy down. Stanger literally throws up her hands in frustration over Gruber and says New York millionaires are “fakakht,” meaning farkakta — the Yiddish word for crazy.

It makes for fun television.

And of course, should Gruber decide she wants Stanger’s one-on-one advice, she could arrange a lunch meeting with her. Stanger charges just $5,000 an hour for that.

Debra Nussbaum Cohen is an award-winning journalist and the author of Celebrating Your New Jewish Daughter: Creating Jewish Ways to Welcome Baby Girls into the Covenant. Follow her on Instagram @debranc or email her at dncnews@icloud.com.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

The coming year promises to be filled with more complex and historic developments. We are entering an era where independent, fact-based Jewish journalism will be more important than ever. We need to be ready for whatever 2025 will bring, and with your help, we can be.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO