Her Family Secretly Signed Her Up For CatholicMatch!
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Gabriela’s sudden career change rocked her world and landed her back with her parents.
“My mother was worried about me, and she thought the best solution was to date. I just wanted to hang out with my girlfriends and not date for a very long time,” Gabriela remembers. All the changes in her life mixed with online dating . . . how could that go well?
But her wise mother knew her daughter needed to face her dating fears. One day, returning from her new job, Gabriela found her mother and her aunt signing her up for CatholicMatch, using her Facebook pictures on her profile. “At first, I was very annoyed! But then I thought, well, what’s the worst that could happen?” So despite her unorthodox introduction to online dating, Gabriela left her profile up.
Just two weeks later, Charles sent her a message.
He had been a member for a few months, having joined with low expectations. “There is definitely a feeling of uncertainty in online dating since you don’t have any context or background behind a person,” he explains. But since he wanted a woman strong in her faith, he decided to give CatholicMatch a try.
“What attracted me to Gabriela at first was her passion for her faith and life, and her depth. She’s also very beautiful, which helps,” Charlie says. Gabriela did not recognize his picture, later finding she’d filtered him out of her searches.
“I liked that he was the one who reached out to me. I really liked that he was confident enough to tell a joke!” she reflects. This lighthearted start kept the pressure low, and within a week they had exchanged numbers and set up the first date on Halloween.
“When I got off the elevator to the rooftop restaurant, the first thing that struck me was her beauty!” Charles says about their first date. Gabriela, always having an eye for fine things, chose one of the most expensive restaurants in Chicago.
“Charlie thought I was trying to get a few good bucks out of him, but I had no idea! I’d really wanted to go to a rooftop restaurant in the city for a long time,”
Gabriela recalls. Her rustiness was understandable since this was her first date in almost ten years. Why? During that time, she had taken a serious spiritual journey, did a missionary trip in Brazil, and there had joined a convent for a time. So now, she was nervous, especially meeting someone from online.
“Well, welcome to 2018! We all feel uncomfortable but you get over it,” Charles chuckles. They enjoyed each other’s company more than expected, learning about their life passions and faith stories. The first date led to a second, and then a third, and soon they were “going steady,” to put it in antique terms.
They soon were face to face with an obstacle everyone hits: understanding where they were and what they really wanted.
Were they right for each other? How were they ready for the future, and how were they not?
“Frankly, I had the tendency to make sure everything was aligned and perfect. This is where I had to grow,” Charles says. To counter his attention to detail and perfectionism, he worked to identify the core things he wanted, like finding a woman of deep faith and character. And he started to see that in Gabriela.
“The more I dated Charlie, the more I realized that if I wanted to move forward, I had to mature and grow in areas I was afraid of,” Gabriela says of her own path. During missionary trips and in the convent, she had embraced being a free soul dependent on God alone. Leaving that life left her confused and hopping from job to job. She realized during the past years, she’d neglected learning the practicalities of living in the real world as. So she decided to get that stuff in order, pronto! Her family and friends noticed, and told her how they enjoyed watching her become more organized and dependable.
As the months passed, Charlie was struck by Gabriela’s unfailing commitment.
Rain or shine, she was always there for him and full of zeal to support their relationship however she could. It was these little, hidden acts of service that made him fall in love with her. He first realized it when they both flew to D.C. to visit his mother, and again during a prayer retreat. So he took Gabriela on a nostalgic date: first to a nice Brazilian restaurant (he too had lived in Brazil for a time), and then visited some old date locations. Finally, by their favorite lake, he proposed.
“A word of advice: check the weather. It was freezing!” he adds.
They married February 22 of 2020. Charlie’s friend from high school celebrated the traditional Mass with a small audience of close family and friends present. Neither Gabriela nor Charlie wanted to get bogged down the party details. They instead wanted the focus to be on the wedding Mass and a beautiful ceremony. So far, they are loving newlywed life!
“Charlie’s love, fervor, and commitment to our Lord are what I appreciate the most about him,” Gabriela reflects.
“I love married life! Gabriela draws me closer to God in ways that I never have before. At the end of the day, that is what I think made being with her so fundamentally and radically different,” Charlie says. “It’s hard to imagine it any other way!”