On March 1, 2020—11 days before the World Health Organization declared Covid-19 a global pandemic, and the scope of human intimacy shrank to the size of a touchscreen—Sharmistha Dubey became the chief executive of the largest internet dating company on the planet. Dubey had spent years climbing through the C-suites at Match Group, where the conference rooms are named after love songs and one of the walls is covered in wedding announcements. Now she had control of a $20 billion empire. Some of the most profitable brands in the business, including Tinder, OkCupid, Hinge, and Match, were hers to command, as were the love lives of tens of millions of people.

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