A Bay Area woman's quest for love took a public turn when she paid for a dozen billboards along Highway 101 to find a husband, drawing national attention, a flood of applications, and plenty of hate mail, reports SFGate. Forty-two-year-old Lisa Catalano launched her campaign early last month, with 12 digital billboards flashing her photo and a link to MarryLisa.com, where interested men could apply. The website lists her preferences—college educated, liberal, ages 35 to 45, not a drug user—and includes a list of her favorite artists, physical stats, and testimonials from friends.
"I never expected I would do something like this in my life," she tells People. The stunt quickly went viral, and Catalano says she was soon flooded with responses; she has since closed the application form on her site. In total, she received 3,800 applications, 8,200 messages, and a phone-book-size stack of hate mail—so much so that she printed it all out for dramatic effect before a recent interview, per SFGate—but she also got plenty of positive notes and a Guinness World Record-worthy number of marriage proposals. Despite the age range she provided, she's heard back from potential suitors as young as 19 and as old as 78, per People.
Not all the attention was welcome: She says that some of her personal information, including her address, was posted on 4chan, and she's now keeping a lower profile for safety reasons, per SFGate. Catalano, who sells vintage clothing and takes on other freelance jobs, isn't saying how much the campaign cost, but she calls it "a shocking amount." She tells People she'll likely reveal that figure after she's found her match. She handles MarryLisa.com all on her own, playing publicist, web guru, and her own matchmaker, per SFGate. She's now sorting through the most promising candidates—one small batch at a time to keep things manageable—and says she's excited to start dating. Her focus, she insists, is romance, not publicity. "There's some really great guys in this mix," she said.
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