Turn-of-the-century Yonkers - and New York City. Mrs Levi is a wheeler-dealer of a matchmaker who admits that she's tired and out to marry for money. Horace Vandergelder, Yonkers's most successful merchant, is the object of her affection but she doesn't let him know it until he's come to New York and humiliated himself chasing a younger woman. Meanwhile, Vandergelder's two clerks, Cornelius and Barnaby, also come to New York, meet and fall in love with milliner Irene and her assistant Minnie, and lead the women to believe they have money. When they discover the men don't, the women don't care, and everyone ends up happily in love.