Lightning doesn't strike twice, as they say, and the same goes for the First Dates restaurant. Despite even the best efforts of the expert matchmakers, sometimes finding long, lasting love can't be banked on.
But then again, that might be holding it to too high a standard.
Take Carla and Shez, for example. The couple met in the First Dates restaurants two years ago and immediately clicked, and are now engaged to be married this year.
Taking a leaf out of Carla's book was her own mammy, Phil, 65, from Antrim, who signed up hoping to recreate just a little of her daughter's dating success.
At first, her expectations were minimal, just that her date was good-looking: "Everyone wants someone handsome, I don't care if he's got hair or he's bald. What I don't want is someone in-between. None of the side sweeps or the tufts either side."
"I would like someone who's probably like me, young at heart, doesn't take life too seriously and doesn't take themselves too seriously."
She even gave onlookers a hint for gauging how much she's enjoying the date: if she likes him, "my face will probably light up".
Enter: Stan, 69, from Galway who bears more than a passing resemblance to Kenny Rogers.
Fifteen years single, Stan said that "there's a lot of things I miss about having a companion like going to the cinema, listening to live music in the pubs and that but it's not the same going out on your own".
It wasn't long before Stan was immersed in telling Phil his unbelievable back story, having been born to Polish parents making their way to Canada following World War II.
"My parents arrived in Ireland first of October 1949 on a boat trip from Sweden to Canada and they stopped in Cobh in Co Cork and didn't get any further", he said.
Their boat was designed for a crew of 50 but there were 384 people on board, all refugees heading toward Canada.
"The Canadian government refused to give my dad a visa to travel on because he had been shot a few days before the end of the war and he still had the scars on his chest. They suspected that it was probably tuberculosis and because he couldn't speak English he couldn't explain."
The tales didn't stop there, either. As they were finishing their meal, Stan recalled his father's go-to breakfast when he was little, something he'd call a "scrambly egg".
"Basically two raw eggs with a couple of spoons of sugar beaten up and swallowed. We don't know where he got that from, maybe after the war when he was recuperating with the Swedish Red Cross."
It was around this stage that Stan gave his insight into what any good couple needs to go the distance: "If I was to give any young couple advice on a relationship, based on my own experience, I would say to spend more time talking to each other."
By now, Phil's face was decidedly not lighting up. "I stopped myself from asking him questions about it because it was coming at me all the time.
"He's got a really interesting past, and I have to hear about it", she deadpanned.
You don't need to be a wine connoisseur to impress Phil!
— RTÉ2 (@RTE2) February 8, 2023
Find out how she gets on with chatty Stan on this weeks First Dates 🍷#FirstDatesIrl | Thursday 9.30pm pic.twitter.com/WXlgIYKIyJ
Her frustration seemed to surface at one point when Stan asked what she liked doing. She answered that she loved dancing, which set Stan talking about his ex and himself competing in dance competitions.
"Oh mother of god!" Phil said, before his story had even really gotten going.
"He asked very few questions about me and then when I answered the questions, there was something I said that linked him to something that he had to talk about."
It was only at dessert that Phil got the chance to say she'd gone to university in her 40s, while raising four children, emerging with not only a BA but a masters, too.
When the topic of Carla, Phil's daughter, came up it only seemed to underpin how underwhelming their own connection was. "They had so much in common", Phil said, to which Stan replied, "Ah, well".
"If he hadn't talked so much about himself, I can imagine that I would have seen him again."
When time came to reveal whether they'd see each other again, Phil wasted no time in telling Stan, "no". Stan agreed, citing the distance between each of them. However, "The distance had nothing to do with it for me", Phil quipped.
"I found that I got your parents' story, that was ever before we sat down for a meal. There's one to remember for dating again! You couldn't tell me anything about me, apart from I've four children."
"You should have told me to shut up!" Stan laughed.
Still, the pair parted with a kiss on the cheek and some lessons learned.
Watch First Dates Ireland on Thursdays at 9:30pm on RTÉ2.
