Melinda Jacobs quickly tired of playing Ed McMahon to Rusty Gatenby's Johnny Carson. "The Rusty Gatenby Review with Melinda Jacobs" is a goner after two or so months.

Gatenby, whose 30-year traffic/entertainment reporting career with KSTP-TV came to an end earlier this year, and entertainment reporter Jacobs had been shooting, recording and producing webcasts on location and in her home broadcasting studio. (Here's my startribune.com/video interview with T.D. Mischke, which was recorded at Jacobs' studio after the former radio guy appeared on the review: startribune.com/video/263076021.html.)

"I pride myself on getting along with everybody," Jacobs told me. "I don't have a mean bone in my body. But you want your fiancée to be part of the show and do these stories that are all about you — it was all about him — just come forward and say it. Don't make me be a fool [so you can] have me laugh at your stupid jokes, when I could be volunteering. I wish him well."

Gatenby quipped: "Imagine how Jennifer [Vock] feels … she has to laugh at my jokes for the rest of her life! Thankfully, she also is beautiful, talented and funny and together, Jennifer and I may just become the 'Steve & Sharon' of podcasting! I wish her [Jacobs] well and hope she wished me well with 'The Rusty Gatenby Review.' "

While Gatenby called Vock the COO of the review, I'd described Vock's unofficial role as that of chief sarcasm officer — and more importantly the techie for the podcast.

Jacobs said her new entertainment focus will be a dating show, with many other facets, on the Tom Barnard Network starting Oct. 24.

a new beginning Melinda Jacobs will move to the Tom Barnard Network.

A credible Kanye sighting

Kim Kardashian's third husband may have been in Minnesota a couple of Mondays ago.

"I shook hands with Kanye West in the Minneapolis airport today. Kinda wished it had been @3RDEYEGIRL," tweeted Noah Gray, a senior editor at the international science journal Nature. Gray told a Twitter follower, "I got my Ph.D at Mayo Clinic. Giving a lecture there to help celebrate the 25th anniversary of the graduate program."

Gray was snippy with me on Twitter. "Wait. Did you really contact Nature's press office to find out more about my tweet mentioning I saw Kanye West in Minneapolis? To respond to your query, I have no further comment on the matter. Thanks."

I am bemused by the attitude. He wanted the world to know he saw West or he wouldn't have tweeted it.

Gray was not my first source on the mid-West sighting. "Just saw Kanye West at MSP," stated an e-mail from a reader who identified himself as LP, attaching a photo that could have been West or Bigfoot.

I asked LP if he was kidding me. "No. He arrived on the Delta flight from Japan. I saw him waiting to be pick[ed] up outside. … He was with a bodyguard, an assistant and a cop. And I respect his privacy so I was keeping a distance. Are you really CJ? You do not sound like her."

My apologies, LP. I'm a suspicious person, who likes to be right.

Dating via Facebook

Devin Markell hasn't been able to "Hinge" the date of his dreams, but the NYC company for which he works is bringing that opportunity to Minnesotans via an app.

A 2002 Minnetonka High School grad, Markell is in charge of user acquisitions at the start-up behind the dating app called "Hinge."

"I've been here about four months," said Markell, who left the world of high finance to indulge his creative, entrepreneurial sides. "The idea is you log in with Facebook, we show you matches who are connected to you through your social network. It's similar to you being introduced by a friend, except we do it for you. … Over time we get better, through your preferences, at figuring out what kind of a person is a better match for you. We're in 13 cities, the last of which was Miami. It's been pretty successful in the places we've launched so far."

Has "Hinge" worked for Markell?

"I have not found 'the one' yet, I would say. The dates I have been on on Hinge have been wonderful. You immediately have the personal connection, usually of a friend in common, which gives you something to talk about."

Markell's parents, Mike and Jeanne Markell, recently celebrated 45 years of marriage. "We met on a blind date arranged by our friends," Jeanne said. "We just didn't have the Internet to make it happen. … We grew up in Minnesota where everybody knows everybody, right? I said (I am just such an interfering mother), 'You should have a focus group of mothers of millennials to find out how they met,' " Jeanne said. She doesn't think her son — "a sweet Minnesota boy who's crazy about life in New York" — is going to take that advice.

C.J. can be reached at cj@startribune.com and seen on FOX 9's "Buzz." E-mailers, please state a subject; "Hello" does not count. Attachments are not opened.