Looking for Love via YouTube

Alex Lyngaas’s mother was doing OK. On the verge of turning 70, she was an outdoorsy, active woman with friends and two adoring sons—Alex and his younger brother. But after a divorce from a 20-year second marriage, she’d given up on finding a man she could share her life with.

Being good sons, Alex and his brother bought Eva a subscription to a dating site, but that didn’t work out for her. And, according to Cosmopolitan, she starting doubting why anyone would want to date her. That’s when Alex decided that online dating wasn’t going to cut it for his mom—how could a dating profile possibly contain her personality?—and the best way to help was to make a video about the strong and caring woman he knew and loved, and share it.

So Alex put together a video using clips that he’d shot of her doing the things she loves—tennis, yoga, skiing, dancing…. Then he sat Eva down and showed it to her. Her reaction became part of the final video:

“My gosh, Alex, what do you want to do with this?”

Put it on YouTube, Alex suggested.

“The Internet?”

Here’s the video that Alex posted on Mother’s Day.

The video, “Looking for Adam” (a play on “Eva”) has had 16 million views and inspired thousands of people to email her from around the world with messages of encouragement and solidarity, as well as requests to meet.

So, what happened?

Finding the love of your life may not be that much easier when you have thousands of suitors to pick from, but clearly Eva couldn’t consider herself “undateable.”