Zoe Papadopoulos, 29

Yassas! I’m Zoe, twenty-nine, Greek-Canadian, a realtor in Dunbar and Kitsilano, and a firm believer that most problems in life can be solved with good food, loud family, and a day on the water. Opa!

Let me tell you about my family first, because with a Greek family, there is no version of my story that doesn’t start there. My grandparents came to Vancouver from Crete in the seventies, and my yiayia still lives in the same Dunbar house my dad grew up in, where she grows tomatoes the size of softballs and judges everyone’s life choices with love. I’m the oldest of four cousins who are basically siblings, and our Sunday family dinners regularly hit twenty people. Twenty! There is shouting, there is laughter, there is my uncle Spiro telling the same three stories, and there is always, always too much food. If you come to dinner and leave hungry, my yiayia takes it as a personal insult, and she will remember it forever.

I got into real estate six years ago, after a business degree at UBC, and I genuinely love it. I mostly work Dunbar, Kitsilano, and Point Grey, so I spend my days in some of the prettiest neighborhoods in the city, helping young families find their first home and downsizers find something with less stairs. My favorite part is handing over the keys. I still get emotional every single time. Last spring I helped a young couple buy a little character house two blocks from where I grew up, and the wife cried, and then I cried, and the movers just stood there awkwardly. Worth it.

Sailing is my church. My dad taught me on a little Laser dinghy out of the Jericho Sailing Centre when I was nine, and I’ve been hooked ever since. These days I crew on a friend’s 32-footer out of the Royal Vancouver Yacht Club, racing Wednesday nights in English Bay in the summer. There is nothing, nothing, like flying downwind with the spinnaker up, salt on your face, the city glittering behind you. I’ve done the Southern Straits race twice, overnight, freezing, exhausted, and I’d do it again tomorrow. When I’m not racing, I’m daysailing with friends to Bowen Island for fish and chips, or just anchored off Kits Beach watching the sunset with nowhere to be.

I’m also deeply involved in the Greek community here. Greek Days on Broadway every June is basically my Christmas, I volunteer at the food tents, and I will fight you over which church makes the best loukoumades. I dance, badly but joyfully, at every wedding, christening, and name day, of which there are approximately nine thousand per year. And I cook. My spanakopita has won the family Christmas competition three years running, a fact I mention constantly, to everyone’s annoyance.

Last summer my yiayia finally agreed to teach me her kourabiedes recipe, those Christmas butter cookies buried in powdered sugar. We spent a whole Saturday in her kitchen, flour absolutely everywhere, her correcting my technique every thirty seconds while we both laughed. They didn’t turn out exactly like hers, they never do, but my cousins demolished the entire batch in one sitting, which in my family counts as a standing ovation.

Vancouver life for me is the seawall at Jericho on a clear morning, coffee from the little place on Dunbar Street where they know my order, open houses on sunny Saturdays, and long summer evenings that smell like the ocean. In the winter I ski, badly but fearlessly, at Cypress, and I host what my friends call the annual moussaka summit, where I cook for twelve and everyone leaves with leftovers.

What am I looking for? A partner with a big heart and a bigger laugh. Someone family-oriented, because my family comes as a package deal and there is no negotiating that. I want someone who’ll learn to sail, or at least be willing to sit on the boat holding a rope and looking cute. Someone who’ll dance with me at Greek weddings even if they have two left feet, especially if they have two left feet. Loyalty matters to me more than anything. I’m affectionate, I’m loud, I’m a little much sometimes, and I’m completely worth it. If you can handle Sunday dinner with twenty Greeks, you can handle anything, and honestly, they’ll love you within ten minutes. They love everyone. That’s the whole thing.