From flatmates to soulmates now we’re helping others find love!

After a rocky start to their romance, this Auck­land couple is now chan­ging the dat­ing game

New Zealand Women’s Day | 22nd June 2026

Compatico owners Elise Dalrymple-Keast and Tim Hight on finding love.

New Zealand Women’s Day | 22nd June 2026

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When Elise Dalrymple-Keast’s flat was look­ing for another ten­ant in 2019, their new house­mate Har­rison sug­ges­ted a guy called Tim Hight.

Elise recalls, “The way Har­rison pitched it, he said, ‘My friend Tim’s great, although he did once go through a wall at a party while try­ing to do a hand­stand, but that was a one-off.’”

Tim says bash­fully, “I thought I was more ath­letic than I actu­ally was. Although I did get the wall replastered, which coun­ted towards my being accep­ted into the flat.”

Fast-for­ward a few years and Elise, who turns 30 this week, and Tim, also 30, are now a com­mit­ted couple, help­ing oth­ers find a mate through Com­patico, a match­mak­ing ser­vice for over-thirties.

But when they first met, it wasn’t love at first sight.

“I used to tease Tim about his ter­rible din­ners and that was the extent of our inter­ac­tions,” admits Elise.

Then COVID hit, the rest of the flat bailed, and Elise and Tim were left home alone in an old Auck­land villa.

“We had a white­board with 50 things we wanted to do dur­ing lock­down,” says Tim, who is now head of data at a major bank. “We called them quar­antiv­it­ies, with everything from paint-and-sip nights to pic­nics.”

Shar­ing a home office with Tim, Elise slowly found her­self becom­ing “impressed by his work ethic” and how artic­u­late he was on calls.

“I thought he was cute, although I was busy pur­su­ing gym boys back then,” she laughs.

As Elise grew out of her “gym-dude phase”, she tried dat­ing apps but found Tinder over­whelm­ing.

“After a par­tic­u­larly time­wast­ing exper­i­ence, I wrote down what I wanted from a rela­tion­ship and Tim ticked all the boxes.”

Yet mak­ing that list still didn’t bring the couple together.

“Our flat had been going for seven years, so there were all these spirit bottles with tiny amounts in them, and another night dur­ing lock­down, we decided to cook a three-course meal and empty all those bottles,” Elise recalls. “We stayed up till 4am, when Tim tried to kiss me, but I thought it was just that I was con­veni­ent and didn’t want to com­plic­ate things, so I turned him down.”

Little did she know, Tim genu­inely fan­cied her.

“From my per­spect­ive, Elise was amaz­ing,” he says, adding he loved how organ­ised she was with her early starts, com­mit­ment to the gym, and jug­gling mul­tiple jobs while fin­ish­ing her degree in com­merce and polit­ics. “But no means no and I cer­tainly didn’t want to be a pest, so I didn’t try again.”

That rocky start to their romance saw Elise then spend the next year try­ing to work her way out of the friend zone. But while she thought she was “mak­ing these big obvi­ous moves”, Tim con­tin­ued to think she wasn’t inter­ested.

Giv­ing up hope they’d ever get together, Elise moved to Christ­ch­urch in 2021 to focus on her mar­ket­ing busi­ness, Brand­sit­ters, until a mutual friend’s birth­day brought her back to Auck­land in 2022 and Elise devised a plan to sleep on the sofa at Tim’s flat.

“Halfway through the party, I made a beeline to where Tim was sit­ting,” Elise says. “I can’t remem­ber the line I used, but it was enough to make his arm slip from the back of the couch to my shoulder!”

Tak­ing things slowly after 18 months of long-dis­tance love, Elise even­tu­ally returned to Auck­land for work, where a ses­sion with her mentor led to her agree­ing to take over the match­mak­ing com­pany foun­ded by Theresa Gat­tung.

“Unlike the apps, Com­patico is mem­ber­ship based, and we host din­ners and dat­ing mix­ers, as well as facil­it­at­ing one-on-one dates.”

That decision brought Elise and Tim closer – now the couple is not only deeply in love, but they also work together.

“Hav­ing Tim on board with his tech­nical input is vital, and because we want Com­patico to be the best it can be, he works pub­lic hol­i­days and Sundays with me,” Elise explains.

In spite of the happy couple’s desire to travel and one day “triple-bar­rel” their names, for the time being, they’re put­ting in the hours to make their fledgling busi­ness fly.

“Our vis­ion is for Com­patico to be a place where healthy rela­tion­ships begin,” says Elise.

And hav­ing sur­vived their own long-dis­tance court­ship, they’re find­ing work­ing together a doddle.

Elise says, “Tim is doing mara­thon train­ing with me and hik­ing.”

He adds, “And some­times I talk Elise into watch­ing sci-fi movies with me.”

With their own romance blos­som­ing beau­ti­fully – they cel­eb­rated four years together in June – Elise and Tim are look­ing for­ward to play­ing a role in other’s people’s love stor­ies.

If you’re over 30 and look­ing for love, visit com­patico.co.nz.

You can read the full article here.