Never say never. At least not when wondering, in this technological age of seemingly infinite options, whether Jews not only can meet, but narrow their selections down to one ideal Jewish mate, whom they subsequently marry.

Skeptical? Just schmooze with veteran matchmaker and spreader of blissful, international marital tidings Leah Hakimian. When the native St. Louisan, who now splits her time primarily between Jerusalem and Great Neck, N.Y., celebrated her 70th birthday earlier this month, she did so surrounded by family. She and Iranian-born Yusef, her husband of nearly 50 years, have four daughters, four sons-in-law and nine grandchildren, ranging from toddler-hood to a soldier in the Israeli Army.

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For the record, the Hakimians met at a party in June 1960. Yusef proposed in three months, and they married three months later. Any regrets? “He says he would do it again and ask me to marry him sooner,” Leah Hakimian laughs in a telephone interview from Jerusalem.

Her two passions, outside of family, remain Jerusalem and matchmaking. The latter, an ancient tradition, was particularly strong in “small, isolated communities like those of the Eastern European shtetl, where the key to survival was tight social cohesion,” according to the Jerusalem Post, which has described Hakimian as “the modern-day inheritor of the generations-old role of the shadchan,” or matchmaker.

In a career that has included serving as principal of Solomon Schechter Day School and associate executive director of Central Agency for Jewish Education, both in St. Louis, Hakimian, who has a Ph.D. in education from St. Louis University, was founding director in 1995 of Connections St. Louis, a community-sponsored Jewish matchmaking program.

In Jerusalem, where she and her family relocated, she became founding director in 1998 of Scopus, another Jewish matchmaking program, this one with an international clientele. Though she takes credit for just 15 marriages out of the hundreds and hundreds of introductions she arranged, Hakimian does not seem the least bit disappointed. While she retired as a professional matchmaker eight years ago, she now indulges her love of spreading marital happiness in her Web-based column, Godsend, published in the online editions of the St. Louis Jewish Light, The Jerusalem Post and Jewish Week in New York, “my three parallel universes,” she says.

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In one Godsend column, Hakimian wrote of former St. Louisan Stuart Banashek and his bride, “quintessential California girl” Sarah Maxwell. Peace Corps volunteers, they met when both were ill in Lilongwe, the capital of Malawi. Hakimian later happened to meet a healthy Banashek in Washington, D.C., where he was awaiting his next overseas assignment.

Of the sickbed beginnings of his romance, Banashek, who had worked as an agro-forestry advisor in the village of Lipunga, told Hakimian: “During that week in the infirmary, there weren’t too many people to talk to.” He and Maxwell, then assigned to the village of Nzama as a secondary school teacher and curriculum development coordinator, struck up a friendship.

“Had I met Stuart in California, I don’t think we would have connected,” Maxwell subsequently told Hakimian. But cooped up in the infirmary they “realized that we shared the same values,” she said. Rabbi Bernard Lipnick officiated at their San Francisco wedding in 2004.

With a reporter’s proverbial “nose for news,” plus the heart and soul of a matchmaker, retired or not, Hakimian finds herself seeking potential Godsend columns almost everywhere, including within the New York Times’ Sunday marriage announcements, where couples typically mention how they met.

To date, Hakimian has had 50 Godsend columns published. Some of her couples met through Internet dating services, such as the Jewish-focused “Saw You at Sinai.” Others, Hakimian reads about and does the follow-up.

“I’m at a point in my life where I’ll drive a long way for a story,” she says. Say a couple mentions in The New York Times that they were childhood buddies in Great Neck, N.Y. Hakimian contacts them, meets and interviews them during one of her visits to the States, then writes their story and shows it to them before it goes online.

No wonder. She’s a striver for perfection. A lover of happy endings. During her speech here, she plans to talk, in part, about how at least one American community provides cash incentives to those who help arrange marriage. She’s a fan, too, of individuals who made it a mission to introduce eligible singles.

But is couple-hood the only route to happiness? “I believe in the institution of marriage,” Hakimian says. “But I don’t tell others what to do.” Not much, anyway.

Leah Hakimian features stories of 21st century Jewish marriages in her Godsend columns. To tell her how you met and married, e-mail her at [email protected].

Leah Hakimian

What: She will speak on “Never Say Never: How Couples Meet and Marry in the Jewish World.” The occasion commemorates a slightly after-the-fact celebration of Tu B’Av, which falls this year on July 26. Mentioned in the Talmud and celebrated, most notably in Israel, the holiday is the Jewish equivalent of Valentine’s Day, marked by dancing, giving red roses, studying and dedicating love songs on the radio.

Where: Saul Brodsky Jewish Community Library, 12 Millstone Campus Drive

When: 7:30 p.m. July 29

How much: Free to Friends of the Library, otherwise $7 per person. Dessert and post-speech chatting included

More info: For reservations call 314-432-0020