I think most people just want to save you from wasting money when they were giving you advice. $60 is quite a lot for chess lessons. You should definitely consider Ben Finegold if you're going to pay that much. He has a ton of experience with weak players and is a good teacher. I don't know if I can say this (sorry mods, if not) but YouKnowWho is an FM here who used to give lessons for a lot less and you'd get just as much out of his lessons.

I'm not nearly good enough at poker to comment on learning poker, but chess learning seems to be more layered. Like you have to learn the basics before you can understand the next level and so on. And it takes a fair bit of time to learn the basics. So as long as you find someone who knows what the basics are and can kinda teach you, the rest doesn't matter much. I guess you do have to know a certain amount to figure out what that basic knowledge is.

ETA - keep in mind that chess lessons are normally a LOT more frequent and go on for a lot longer than typical poker lessons.

And the problem is that advanced chess knowledge is a sucker's bet. You can read a book or take a lesson from a really advanced player, and everything they say will make perfect sense to you and you'll feel like you are making a ton of progress.

But with a board and an opponent in front of you, you won't be able to apply those advanced ideas to your games. It just won't work for you without the basics. It feels like chess is a game of acquired knowledge, but it's really a game of acquired skill, which is slightly but importantly different.