Forget the apps and algorithms. To find love, maybe just go to a 166-year-old bar.

McGillin’s Olde Ale House, the 166-year-old pub in Center City long owned by the same family, has determined that being a matchmaker is a strategic advantage in a crowded industry.

Of course they serve draft beer, Philly cheesesteaks, and wings — but the bar has leaned especially hard into being, in its own description, the place where more couples have met than anywhere else in Philadelphia.

At McGillin’s first reunion for such couples this month, attendees seemed less like regulars at a bar and more like alumni of the same beloved college club, touched by those who came before and rooting for those to follow.

Everyone wore red-and-white name tags with the year their significant McGillin’s romantic event had taken place. The upstairs bar, where couples sat under tinsel hearts and drank from frosted glasses, was warm and close. There was merch; the crowd clapped especially hard for long marriages.

It was also a media event: four TV news stations, as well as the Philadelphia Citizen and The Philadelphia Inquirer, came to capture the famous McGillin’s couples. Irene Levy Baker, the bar’s longtime publicist and author of the new book Cheers to McGillin’s, Philly’s Oldest Bar‚ which has its own chapter devoted to “mating magic,” is clearly good at her job.

She is in touch with more than 200 couples who found love at the bar, and McGillin’s has so far filled up four guestbooks of signatures and anecdotes: Met New Year’s Day 2002. Engaged 9/22/12. Met here in 1996 when I was waitressing. Still together in 2024!

“We actually met for the first time one bar stool over. I was eating a grilled cheese sandwich,” said Emily Dowling, 28, sitting beside her husband, Giacomo Trevisan, after a keynote presentation of McGillin’s love stories. Dowling and Trevisan’s name tags were marked 2022.

On the fateful night that year, Dowling was out with a friend and Trevisan was visiting for the first time, having just arrived in the United States on an extended work trip from Italy. Hearing him speaking Italian, Dowling asked what had brought him to town.

“I was impressed that a girl would just start talking to me. In Italy, it doesn’t work like that,” Trevisan, 32, said.

The two got married less than a year later. They closed out the night of their wedding with a drink at McGillin’s.

In a world of loneliness and dating app dread, in which people pay matchmakers and make PowerPoint presentations and even take out billboards looking for love, there is a certain nostalgia to the idea that a bar, with salvaged oak tables and framed liquor licenses dating back to 1871, is the best place to find it. At some point, the legend probably becomes self-fulfilling.

During an interview, Baker googled “where do couples meet in Philadelphia,” and the AI summary dutifully reported that “couples in Philly meet in classic old spots like McGillin’s Olde Ale House.”

Diane and John Davison, for example, met in 1969: He was a regular, she was a first timer. The downstairs bar was smoky and packed. Patrons passed glasses of beer hand-to-hand above the crowd because no one could reach the bar.

“I remember the first time I saw her face,” John said. “Nice smile.”

“I remember the night,” Diane, 79, said. “John and I don’t exactly agree on some of the details.”

The two have been married for over 50 years, and the bar is an intimate part of their story. John’s brother, who has since passed away, also met his wife at McGillin’s. Just before Christmas, John celebrated his 80th birthday there, and the other diners sang to him.

Both Baker and Christopher Mullins Jr., who co-owns the bar with his parents, have theories about why McGillin’s is a magnet for connection: it’s unpretentious, it’s approachable. The tables are close. The beer obviously helps.

At night it can get packed, but the atmosphere during the day is cozy; a fire crackles in the downstairs grate and patrons order soup for lunch.

“We don’t want to be old-fashioned and forgotten, but we want it to be the same kind of feel that people experienced 50 years ago,” Mullins said.

Of course, there are some differences. Kaitlynn Capoferri, 32, mentioned wanting to get wings and beers at McGillin’s — on her Tinder profile. So Amanda Capoferri, 32, asked her on a date to the bar in 2017.

When Amanda proposed at the bar three years later, “All I could get out of my mouth after stumbling to pull the ring out of my pocket was, ‘I know how much you love McGillin’s, and I can only hope that you love me as much.’” (They’ve been married for four years).

It’s all part of the lore, carefully curated and growing by the day.

“There is one guy who sometimes comments on the Facebook page and he’ll say, ‘I met my wife there and we’re divorced now,’” Baker said. She wasn’t deterred. “I’m like, ‘Well, I’m glad you found love here once. Be sure to come back.’”