- April 24, 2024
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Palm Coast resident Jonathan Raney spent 22 years as a financial advisor, managing other people’s money. Now Raney, 52, manages other people’s marriages.
Raney, co-owner of Elite American Russian Marriage Specialists, spent most of his professional life running Raney Financial Services in Ohio, he said, and never expected to get into the marriage business.
That changed after he met his wife Elena through a dating service. “I found Ellie, and I was so in love with her on the phone and email that I knew I wanted to marry her,” he said.
But there was one problem: Ellie lived in Moscow.
Raney went to Russia and met her, and the two were engaged and married in Russia. When Raney tried to bring his new bride over to the U.S., it wasn’t easy.
“The U.S. and Russia don’t work well together,” he said. “And, we did everything the wrong way.”
The process took about two years, Raney said, in part because he didn’t know how to navigate the visa process or “grease the wheels” of the Russian bureaucracy.
Now, after helping arrange 17 other marriages — and attending nine of them — he has it down to a science.
The marriage business
Raney’s first two clients were guy friends.
They’d seen his marriage with Ellie, he said, and asked if the couple could help them find a Russian bride.
He and Ellie accepted the challenge, and both men are now married.
Those first few marriages were tricky, he said. “The first two or three were basically done ‘at cost,’” he said. “We knew what we wanted to do, we had the drive to do it, the passion, but we didn’t do it perfectly.”
But Raney thought they could.
So he closed up Raney Financial Services in Ohio and, with Ellie, founded Elite American-Russian Marriage Specialists, which the couple now runs together from their home office in Palm Coast.
The reception he’s gotten from the locals hasn’t always been kind. A couple of local business associations — he wouldn’t say which — declined his applications to join.
“We get accusations of white slavery, of being a pimp,” he said. “It’s awful. We just want people to have what we have.”
Making matches
Raney scoffs at the notion that he’s offering “mail-order brides,” saying he screens clients carefully, only works with two or three men at a time, and brings all of them to Russia to meet potential mates in a process that typically lasts for about nine months.
The match-making process can be satisfying, said Ellie Raney, 39.
"Every single client is different, and finding the solution to help them, to make them really happy — that is what we like to do," she said.
Russian women often look abroad for spouses, in part because of Russian’s population gender gap — there are far more women than men in Russia, and women typically outlive men — and in part because of a desire to live abroad, Jonathan Raney said.
As for his clients, Raney said, they follow a pattern. They tend to be middle-aged and financially successful, often businessmen. One was a plumber. Many had been through a divorce and were sick of the dating scene. Many are seeking, essentially, housewives who will fulfill a more traditional female gender role in the marriage than many modern American women are confortable with.
Russian women, Raney said, never had a true feminist revolution.
But neither did Russian men, Ellie Raney said, and Russian women often seek American men who, they hope, are more likely to treat them as equals.
"Most American men, they respect women and treat women as equal partners," she said. "Here, (Russian women) find partners who are also friends, and close friends," she said.
Once the couple has accepted a client, the matching process begins.
First, they work up a 30-page dossier on the guy — “the closest thing to actually meeting him” — to present to potential mates.
They do a professional photo shoot. A psychologist the couple keeps on retainer has clients go through a 300-question psychological profile.
Raney starts figuring out what the client is looking for in a woman, and begins combing dating databases — he has a contractual relationship with four — to find potential matches.
It’s tricky, he said. “The physical stuff’s easy,” he said. “getting inside somebody’s head, that’s hard.”
Raney and his wife put together a folder of information on 10 women they think might be compatible with their clients, he said, and the client then narrows the list to two or three they’d actually like to meet.
Then comes the trip to Russia, often chaperoned by Elena.
Usually, the man will spend four or five days with each woman. Things can get interesting if a client likes a woman, and she likes him as well, but her English isn’t good.
That’s where Ellie — who taught English in Moscow — can help, giving the woman daily English lessons.
"In most cases, I teach them for three or four months, and then they speak more fluently," she said. "And I give them some classes on American culture, American life," she said.
The hardest part of the whole deal, Jonathan Raney said, is often arranging the visas. “You need to know how to grease the wheels,” he said. It’s the wild west over there. It really is.”
But the fun part, he said, is when he sees a relationship he brokered take off.
“There’s a moment when I’m looking, and I’ve seen the split second where that guy has made his decision. It’s like somebody turned on a light bulb in his head,” he said. “The match making is a little difficult, but man oh man, when it begins to work, it’s magic.”
For more information about Elite American Russian Marriage Specialists, visit their website at http://eliteamericanrussianmarriages.com or call 264-1654.
