In honor of Valentine's Day, The Daily Beast has published a ranking of the nation's best and worst cities to find lasting love — from one to 104. Houston came in at a respectable but not impressive number 34 in the rankings, which crunched data from every American city with a population over 200,000.

A closer look at the criteria, though, reveals a study that we find dubious at best.

The first red flag: the No. 1 city Daily Beast says is "conducive to finding, and keeping, a spouse"?

Long Beach, Calif., home of Snoop Dogg and Sublime. Beacons of monogomy, we know.

Houston was also beat out by such hotspots as Laredo, Texas; Garland, Texas; Boise, Idaho; Chula Vista, Calif.; and Chandler, Ariz. (The ranking only included legally married couples — conspicuously overlooking gay relationships and straight couples living in sin.)

The statisticians used five critera: Singles ratio, social life, emotional health, marriage ratio and divorce ratio. Sounds harmless enough, but how does one measure "emotional health"? In this survey, with questionnaires filled out by the kind of people who take hours out of their days to fill out Gallup polls about their emotional health. Houston also rated a "D" for the percentage of singles. Guess the surveyors never hit Midtown on a Saturday night.

And the city's social life? Well, that's as determined by CitySearch — pardon me while I scoff.

Obviously the folks over at the Daily Beast have never spent a Valentine's Day in H-town. Do your's up right with CultureMap's guides to Valentine's restaurants and gifts.

And if they need proof of lovey-dovey Houston success stories, one need only look to Shelby Hodge's coverage of Houston couples. You can keep your Irving, I'll be staying right here.