Super-connector. Community Architect. Dating Doula. Matchmaker. Tender Revolutionary.
Rachel has spent her life paying attention. She reads human dynamics the way others read maps — how people gather, how they leave, how they love, and how they protect their hearts.
Long before she became a matchmaker, she was a bridge-builder. A room-maker. A keeper of stories. Someone who could walk into unfamiliar spaces and leave with a table full of new friends.
By eleven, she was organizing summer camps for five-year-olds. In high school, she hosted candlelit spaghetti lunches and lawn concerts to fundraise for causes she believed in. Gathering people is simply the way she moves through the world.
Then she picked up a camera — and everything shifted.
During a gap year in Amsterdam, she nannied for an Ohio family and documented their daily life. Living inside their home rewired her understanding of intimacy and expanded her sense of what family could be.
That year, she built friendships across cultures, religions, ages, and lifestyles — meeting strangers through art walks and couchsurfing, then later traveling back to photograph their weddings.
Witnessing love, in all its forms, became her apprenticeship.
Rachel is relentlessly warm. She asks exquisite questions. Collaboration is her native language. People unfurl around her. Guarded hearts soften. Stories surface that have never been spoken aloud.
During the pandemic, she stood beside her closest friends as they moved through heartbreak and divorce. She gathered people in similar seasons and found herself with a front-row seat to modern dating culture. What she witnessed felt fragmented, isolating, and profoundly disconnected.
She wanted — urgently — to make it better.
In her search for how, she discovered the world of matchmaking and date coaching. But no existing model matched her intuition, her relational intelligence, or her love of gathering people in real rooms. So she built her own.
She thinks of her work as that of a dating doula and superconnector. Never forcing outcomes — only expanding possibility. Taking the time to know people one-on-one and in community. Helping them soften, open, and remember how to shine (and have fun).
She has created relational gyms — walks, rooms, and experiences where people practice curiosity, honesty, and connection together rather than in isolation. People leave feeling seen. Safe. Hopeful.
This work takes courage. Meaningful relational work carries risk. There is disappointment. There is tenderness. There are moments that ache.
Learning to charge what this work is worth has been one of her greatest challenges. Dating is vulnerable terrain. She comes from the world of art, not sales. But she has learned that stewardship requires sustainability.
Fear no longer gets the front seat.
Hope outweighs it now. The vision is clear. The work is underway.
She’s not for everyone. And she only works with three to five deeply committed private clients each season.
But for those who take the trustfall — who risk on themselves and on her — something shifts.
Patterns soften.
Capacity expands.
Relationships change.
They show up for love with fewer masks and more of their full selves.
In a world that glorifies urgency, Rachel found a patient and present man like nobody she had ever encountered. Adam offers something quietly radical: slowness. Spaciousness. Presence.
Rachel met Adam at a game night on Valentine’s Day in 2013. She liked everyone she met and—true to form—invited the whole group over for brunch the following weekend.
Things didn’t happen as quickly as Rachel would have liked. But she knew Adam was worth pausing for. He was earnest, curious, and a beautiful writer—albeit a little slow.
Two weeks after they met, Adam dressed as a pirate to make a friend’s kid laugh. Rachel thought: this is my guy.
With encouragement from a few wise voices urging patience, they stayed curious. They kept showing up. Eventually, they found their way to a first date: a bike ride to dinner. Unsure whether it officially counted, they tested holding hands while riding—“like they do in Amsterdam.” They’ve been holding hands ever since.
Rachel fell in love quietly.
Adam adding lemon zest to yogurt.
Driving her to the airport.
On New Year’s Eve, they took a train to the Pacific Northwest and proposed to each other beside ice caves—Rachel with a chicken wing, Adam with a diamond ring. They questioned tradition. Made their own. When they combined last names—Baransi and Proehl—they became the Barehls.
Their wedding became exactly what their life would be: joyful, unconventional, and deeply communal. A Labor Day brunch. Jeni’s ice cream. Jumping in the pool. Surrounded by their people.
Since then, their life has unfolded through both adventure and devotion: a year of travel to begin married life, buying a home, welcoming twelve children in and out of their lives as foster parents and exchange student hosts, and building careers rooted in care—from wedding photography to massage therapy and human connection.
While Rachel does much of the front-facing work, Adam is the steady anchor behind the scenes: keeper of calm, nervous-system whisperer, devoted partner, massage therapist, and present papa.
They believe partnership is about taking turns. About supporting each other and each other’s dreams. Lucky for them, their work overlaps beautifully.
This work—and this life, though hard—is a family calling.
And it’s the blueprint for how Rachel helps others fall in love.
Rachel didn’t meet Adam across a coffee shop table or on a dating app.
She met him in a room full of laughter.
In a circle of people who were alive.
In a space that felt like home.
That’s what she builds now.
Not dates that feel like interviews.
But rooms.
Rooms full of vibrant, interesting, kind-hearted humans.
Rooms designed for curiosity and ease.
Rooms where connection happens sideways—over games, shared meals, long walks, dancing, storytelling, and belonging.
Because real love doesn’t happen under pressure.
It happens when your nervous system softens.
When your guard lowers.
When you remember who you are.
Rachel doesn’t just introduce people.
She designs the conditions for love.
She curates environments where attraction can breathe.
Where friendship becomes the foundation for devotion.
Where intimacy unfolds organically.
Where people who have walls up can finally unfurl.
Where love finds you the way it found her—unexpected, playful, and real.
Sometimes it starts across a table.
But more often, it starts in a room.
A room made just for you.
MIKE, happily-matched client
“Talking about my personal life, and what I wanted it to be (and not be), felt easy and natural. Rachel was encouraging yet realistic—no upsell, no hype—just genuine enthusiasm and fresh thinking.”
Collaboration is at the heart of everything we do.
Matchmaking is not a solo pursuit — at its core, it’s a collective one. Behind every introduction lives a quiet constellation of people: peers, mentors, creatives, healers, entrepreneurs, and fellow matchmakers who share resources, insight, and a deep devotion to helping others find aligned, lasting partnership.
We’re plugged into a global web of relationship professionals, community builders, artists, coaches, authors, therapists, founders, farmers, parents, mystics, and everyday magic-makers. These are the people we turn to for perspective, collaboration, referrals, wisdom — and the occasional gentle nudge forward.
Our connection to one another makes the work sharper, safer, more intentional, and more alive.
From conferences in New York, to late-night Uber rides with other matchmakers, to training rooms we somehow found our way into (including Rachel Greenwald’s in La Jolla), to being a regular presence in the Matchmakers Alliance — and countless gatherings around kitchen tables, campfires, and living room floors — we’ve had the honor of learning and building alongside some of the most generous, brilliant humans we know.
And if we’re not the right fit for you, we won’t leave you stranded. We’ll help guide you to someone who is. Because this work is not rooted in competition.
It is rooted in care.
When connectors collaborate, people don’t just find love — they find belonging. And the world heals, a little at a time.
Trained,
Certified,
and Deeply Connected
