Let me give you folks the solution that worked for me.

1) Contact Venmo with a ticket explaining the connection issue from QBO to Venmo personal account.

2) Received can response from Venmo without a solution within the canned FAQ they provided.

3) Noticed small print that said "why don't you just verify your email" --thought this was odd.

4) Clicked link to verify my payment email (which is odd as this has worked for a few years.

5) System did indicate that my e-mail had never been verified (again, verily strange)

6) After verification of email, tried to reconnects and started to get SMS verifications again

7) Success!