Shana Claudio left the bar on the Upper East Side of Manhattan for her third Tinder date of the day. She had already met a finance type for brunch that Sunday in October 2013 through the dating app (he was a bit superficial), and she found the second guy, whom she met for a drink, forgettable.

By now it was early evening, and Ms. Claudio, who now works in corporate communications, was scheduled to go on a date at a nearby bar with a guy named Ken. He turned out to be Ken Andrews, a 33-year-old surgeon in his fourth year of medical residency at N.Y.U., who thought Ms. Claudio was a “total knockout.”

After three hours of conversation, Mr. Andrews walked her home, giving her a quick kiss at her apartment doorstep. “No way was he coming upstairs and he didn’t try — that’s not why I was on Tinder,” said Ms. Claudio, now 33. They went out again, and they were engaged 10 months later. She is now Mrs. Andrews.

Yes, they swiped right and met the one — with hardly a cheap rendezvous in sight, even though Tinder, the ubiquitous mobile-dating app, has been written off by some observers as nothing more than a vehicle to promote quick and easy hookups.