"I thought I’d get to California and become [movie mogul] Sherry Lansing,” says Patti Stanger, B.F.A. ’83. But it wasn’t until 2007, after years of matching millionaires with potential life-mates, that the screenwriting major hit the small screen in a big way, scoring her own reality series.

The star of Bravo TV’s The Millionaire Matchmaker is a familiar face to fans of the “docu-soap,” as she calls it. Season one focused on straight-shooting Stanger steering very rich, often difficult men to the women of their dreams. With season two, which premiered February 12, “You’re going to see a lot more heart,” she says. “It’s a terrible, terrible situation with the economy, and nobody wants to see millionaires flaunting it.”

Though it’s hard to imagine the fast-talking entrepreneur as anything but an overnight sensation, Stanger had many careers before her current incarnation as celebrity matchmaker. Those included post-college layovers in New York’s garment center, a Boca Raton, Florida, matchmaking business, and even a California-based Fortune 500 company. She admits that ditching her day job to start the Millionaire’s Club, an upscale dating service, in 1999 was “the scariest moment in my life.”

Stanger, who lives between L.A. and South Florida, has added the role of author to her entrepreneurial arsenal with Become Your Own Matchmaker: Eight Easy Steps for Attracting Your Perfect Mate (Simon and Schuster, 2009). She’s also taking her ultra-direct brand of dating advice to U.S. college campuses (a UM engagement was tentative at press time) and plans to launch a dating Web site for the coed crowd.

Even at UM, Stanger was always fixing up her friends. In fact, it was in college that she recognized the market share inherent in matters of the heart, selling $5,000 worth of “erotic chocolate” on campus one year for Valentine’s Day.

Now addressing the next generation of lonely hearts, Stanger, who’s 47 and enjoying long-term love, advises, “Even if he’s got a few pennies, make him ask you to do something, take you to the movies, buy you a beer. Make him work for it.” She finds young women too quick to indulge their sweet tooth for amorous activities and suggests more selectivity. After all, she says, “There’s so much candy in the candy store when you’re in your 20s.”

—Robin Shear