Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, April 23, 1990                   TAG: 9004210411
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: E-6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: SAM WHITING SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

WOMAN'S GUIDE: IT'S NEVER TOO LATE TO TRAP A MAN

"It was like shopping for men - like, `Oh, boy, free men,' " Cabot, a 49-year-old author of several self-help-to-the-altar books, said.

"I had learned all these techniques for appealing to men. He was the first one I ever tried it on, and it worked like magic."

Her technique is called "mirroring," in which one mimics precisely the mannerisms of the prey.

Her husband-to-be was having a party at his house. He told her he was wearing jeans and a cowboy shirt. She showed up in the same type of rig. They stared at each other like Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, or Ron and Nancy at the ranch.

"He was picking his fingers, so I started picking my fingers," she says.

It worked. She bucked the odds and became a first-time bride at 42. They have now been married seven years - longer than any of his previous three tries at matrimony.

Once he was hooked, the mimicking stopped. She told him, "Stop picking your cuticles."

Her spinster story has a happy ending, and the message Cabot now preaches is that you can have one, too - for the $17.95 price of her new book, "Marrying Later, Marrying Smarter" (McGraw-Hill), subtitled "How Women Over 30 Can Use Their Savvy and Experience to Attract Exciting Marriageable Men."

It's an embarrassing title, she admits. But no worse than her others: "Letting Go: How to Get Over a Broken Heart," "How to Make a Man Fall in Love With You" and its sequel, "How to Keep a Man in Love With You Forever."

These books have sold nearly a million copies, indicating women are not shamed by the notion.

Men are a different story.

Her 1988 release, "Man Power: How to Win the Woman You Want," was a flop.

The new book gets right to the point in the author's note: "I'd been single long enough to know that after the first 10 or 20 years, dating begins to mean just another fattening dinner you can live without."

Cabot knows from whence she writes. Seventy-two pages later, she confesses, "I was 39 when I began to realize I didn't want to spend the rest of my life alone and that turning 40 without any prospects would be worse than not having a date for New Year's Eve. . . . I realized I had a house, two dogs and three published books, but until then, my most committed relationship had been with Jack LaLanne's Health Spa."

The author admits early and often that some/many/most men tiptoe around the M word.

There are several chapters that pointedly address this issue: Including "Choosing Men Who Don't Want You," "Men Who Won't Marry You" and "Men You Don't Want to Marry."

She also devotes a chapter to dispelling the myth of the "One True Love."

"The whole thing about romance is it's a fantasy," she says.

"I would like