The Cut — Dilg, an actor and musician, and his wife, actor Mimi Kennedy, were interviewed for The Cut’s Love Stories column about their 1960s experience with Operation Match, one of the country’s first computerized dating services. The system matched Dilg with Kennedy while they were students at Amherst and Smith College, respectively—but they didn’t start dating until years later.
The couple told interviewer Hanna Kozlowska about filling out the detailed questionnaires for Operation Match. “I wanted to be taken seriously as the authentic me, not a fake me. I sort of pulled back and said, ‘Well, you know, it would be interesting if I was totally honest about who I am,’” Dilg said. He received Kennedy’s name on his list of matches, but his response to her Catholic high school yearbook photo was, “Oh my God, it’s a nun!” Meanwhile, Kennedy began a relationship with someone else.
The pair briefly crossed paths in person years later at a dance, and finally were brought together by mutual friends in New York in 1974. “And that’s where we met and fell in love. I mean instantly. Wow,” said Dilg. Kennedy added that, when Dilg walked in, “I had that small still voice within me that said, ‘This one’s yours.’” They have been married since 1978.