One June evening five years ago, Judy Sennesh, 51 at the time, was setting up her new computer while "reclaiming space" in her Manhattan apartment.

"I had just split up with my husband of 20 years three weeks before and I was still taking down pictures I didn't like," says Sennesh. "I remembered that a friend had met some nice men on Match.com and decided to take a look. I enjoyed the process of writing the essay. I hadn't sat down and thought about who I was and [what] I wanted in a relationship in a very, very, very long time."

She wound up meeting Mark Wisan, and by the Fourth of July, the night of their first date, the two were ready for some fireworks of their own. "It happened right away. We found out we had lots of mutual friends and our eldest children had been in the same fifth grade class, even though we didn't know each other then." On July 1, 2005, Sennesh and Wisan got married.

With high divorce rates and the tendency to defer marriage in favor of careers, it's no surprise that of the 97 million Americans 45 and older, almost 40% are single, according to recent U.S. Census Bureau figures. What is eye-opening is how many of them are logging on to look for love.

Sennesh is part of a thriving online demographic: single people 50 and older who use dating sites to meet others. Match.com reports that senior membership has grown more than 340% since 2000, and with more baby boomers entering retirement, they expect the trend to continue. When Nielsen/NetRatings compared unique visitors age 55 and older in July 2004 to July 2005, Yahoo! Personals' numbers went from 767,000 to 1,072,000 (repeated views by the same person in the month are not counted). In the same age group, newcomer eHarmony went from relative obscurity in July '04 to 310,000 this July.

Digital dating doctor Ron Geraci, often called the "male Carrie Bradshaw," recently ended a stint as relationship editor at AARP The Magazine and holds seminars on the basics of online dating in Manhattan. "Four years ago, everyone in the group would be in their 20s or 30s," says Geraci. "Now they're in their 60s and 70s. It has become the routine, not the exception."

But aside from sheer numbers and an aversion to lonely nights of TV, what is luring this group of people to log on, and remain, at online dating sites? Industry watchers say it's a combination of word-of-mouth advertising erasing the stigma once associated with singles sites coupled with an increase in computer familiarity.

Like Sennesh, Rudy DiLieto, 51, a fashion executive on Seventh Avenue and Match.com member who went on 30 business trips in the past year, heard about online dating through friends. "I tried it out when I was 47, and back then it had a bit of a negative connotation, but now it's entirely mainstream," says DiLieto. "Just look at how it replaced the personals in the newspaper. In the '80s they were five pages, now it's one column."

Rochelle Adams, Yahoo! Personals relationship expert, says the sites are also easier to navigate than they were five years ago. "There has been a steady increase in the 50-plus set across the industry," says Adams - "partly due to the fact that as they get more comfortable with technology, the industry itself has matured to a point where it's easy to be up and running within minutes of visiting the site."

It's true. Both Match.com and Yahoo! Personals offer safety guidelines and walk you through the process of creating a profile and posting a photo so you're only a few clicks away from E-mailing potential candidates. Costs vary but are generally $20 to $25 a month, though you can browse for free.

Another reason computers are playing Cupid for boomers and seniors alike is because many of their friends and co-workers are already married and they're not meeting single people in the course of their busy professional lives. Or, as Sennesh says: "What are 55-year-olds going to do to meet people? Hang out in bars chugging brewskies? Everyone is doing Match, eHarmony, JDate."

Busy executives like DiLieto and Georgia Fleming, a 59-year-old ad executive in Manhattan, agree. In fact, Fleming is dedicating this year to dating. "I am setting this year aside to make time for myself. It got to the point where I said, 'Wow, it's 2005! I've got to make this happen.' "

So far, Fleming's making good on her promise, going out about twice a month, and the venture is yielding lots of pleasant surprises. "I even get responses from younger men, in their early 40s, but I tell them, you have to be at least 48," says Fleming. This reflects another interesting trend: A little over a third of women over 50 who are dating, are dating younger men, according to an AARP survey.

"I've met some really fabulous guys," she says, "architects of famous buildings, men who ride horses in Argentina, it's amazing the caliber of people you can meet, they've all been very interesting even if we don't click."

Narelle Wolf, 50, in April moved to Manhattan from Toronto and has since gone on 46 dates through JDate and Craig's List. She has met a lot of "interesting" singles, too.

"Oh it has been unbelievable," says Wolf, who works with an animal rescue group. "I could write a book. These men are all professionals, well educated, because I'm picky, and yet they do the craziest things." Including, she says, ordering one steak to split while dining at a fancy restaurant and announcing that sex was expected at the end of the night because an erectile dysfunction drug had been ingested.

Yet whether or not the meet-ups are deemed successful, 50-plus singles say just going through the process of online dating is empowering due to its proactive nature. Getting back into the courting ritual can be particularly challenging for the recently divorced who have been focused on their children and careers for decades. Often, they feel uneasy about intimacy because they haven't dated since they were in their 20s.

"Once they get going," says Geraci, "they find it tremendously gratifying to take things into their own hands. Just the exercise of meeting people is good because if you haven't been out in years, you get rusty."

DON'T BE ALARMED ABOUT PRIVACY OR DIFFICULTY IN PARTICIPATING You can use anonymous names; the sites are easy to navigate, and because you are looking for specific types of people, you have a good chance of getting a response.

EXAMINE THE BIG SITES FIRST - Yahoo! Personals, Match.com, eHarmony. There are thousands of smaller niche sites, many claiming to be spe-cific to older people, but their databases are often too small to be useful.

INSPECT THE SITE How many people in its database are your age? How many potential mates want to meet someone in your age range? The latter is key for women. Also make sure profiles are current and aren't old profiles that the site is leaving up to make the membership seem fuller than it is.

WOMEN MUST CONTACT MEN This is a big point for 50-plus group - the women apply traditional rules (which are obsolete now among people who are past their university years, for a number of societal reasons) and it gets them nowhere. Traditional "male as active pursuer/female as active pursuee" roles are present in online dating, but it's much different in their age group. This is a huge point.

YOU'RE BETTER AT DATING NOW Past 50, men and women often have much more realistic views about themselves and who they would be compatible with. Their life experience is a powerful resource that younger people do not have (and that older people themselves didn't have when they first formed their opinions and mental paradigms about dating). Once they get past the first universal question - "Where do I even start at- tempting to meet people?" -they often find that they're far more relaxed and adept at dating than they imagined.

DON'T LIE ABOUT YOUR AGE Many 60-plus women will agree with all the points about why it's important to list your real age, why not doing so is devaluing yourself and so on. Then they immediately tell me: "Of course, there's no way I'm listing my real age." An interesting trend here is 50-plus men wanting to start families - they feel young and vibrant enough to do it, they don't want to miss out on it, so they often lie about their age to find a woman who wants to have children.

WOMEN, CONSIDER DATING YOUNGER MEN These pairings are happening more and more, for several reasons. Women are often in better physical shape and more active than male counterparts, so younger men are often more their peers in that sense. And age loses some relevance when marriage and having children are removed as motivations for a relationship.

MEET MANY PEOPLE A mistake 50-plus people make is thinking that meeting two or three people in a month, all of whom they don't like, constitutes a reason to give up. Using the medium to meet many people will lessen the "scarcity effect," which can cause an aura of desperation in single people.

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