Their First Date Was at an Airport During a Layover

Neither Pablo nor Nicky ever imagined their first date with their future spouse would be at an airport...

Much less in an airport in a country that neither of them lived in, but such are the surprises of providence!

They both felt called to marriage and, experiencing the usual difficulty with meeting practicing Catholics, had both been on and off of CatholicMatch for about three years without meeting anyone beyond a few brief messages. Still holding out hope, Nicky (who was in her 40's) decided to begin a Novena to St. Joseph for the purpose of meeting her future husband.

Coincidentally–depending on how you define ‘coincidence’–Pablo (who is also in his 40's, and who has always had a devotion to St. Joseph) decided to message her that very day. Nicky answered with a long message, and they were off to the races.

Now might be a good time to mention that Nicky was from Glasgow, Scotland, and was then working outside London, while Pablo was from Elche, Spain.

Regardless, what followed was a series of intense detailed messages flying back and forth between the lands of St. James and St. George. Pablo, for his part, had to spend an hour a day at the task, as he was not yet fluent in English, but evidently considered the effort to be worth it.

After five days of these long messages, Pablo resolved that they ought to meet.

So, praying to St. Joseph, he took a leap of faith and sent the message, “Nicky, I would like to meet you.”

On the other side of the ether, Nicky “freaked her beans” (as they say in Glasgow). The prospect of going to see a man from another country, whom she’d only met online, was daunting, to say the least. Not to mention that, due to their respective schedules, they could only manage one day off in common, which meant the date would consist of sitting in a London airport for a few hours.

On the other hand, she did like him, as far as she could tell.

So, she discussed the matter with a sister and a friend, who allayed her fears by pointing out that, if you are going to meet a strange man for the first time, the airport is probably the safest possible place to do it.

At the time, Nicky was working at Our Lady of Walsingham’s Shrine in Norfolk, so she arranged to drive two hours to London Sanstead airport, while Pablo took an early flight from Spain and arrived at about noon.

They ended up talking, laughing, and getting to know each other for five hours before he had to catch his return flight to Alicante.

As soon as he arrived home, he sent her a message suggesting they do it again sometime.

So, a month later (busy schedules prevented a more rapid reunion), Nicky arranged to come spend Holy Week with some relatives who happened to live in Spain. There she and Pablo were able to date properly for a time; he met her aunts, they attended Holy Week processions and services, and even celebrated a belated birthday for Nicky while she was down there. Come Easter Sunday, and they both agreed that they were going to keep this up. Come June and they realized that they wanted to spend their lives together.

First, though, they decided Pablo needed to meet Nicky’s parents and formally propose. So, in mid-July, he travelled up to Glasgow for the big event.

Pablo was understandably nervous; he was going to meet his girlfriend’s parents and ask for her hand in marriage in the same conversation! But before they arrived, Nicky asked him to put off discussing the engagement for the moment; she was beginning to have second thoughts.

This did not make him feel any less nervous.

So, maybe we are going to break up?

A few days after the meeting with her family, they traveled to a house of prayer in Dalmally, a town in the Scottish Highlands. They had initially planned to spend a few days there praying to Our Lady for their future marriage, but after Nicky’s confession, it became a retreat to discern whether there would be a future marriage at all!

It was a rough couple days for both of them; they were in love, their families approved, everything seemed perfect…yet Nicky had a nagging fear in her heart that something wasn’t quite right. And so they waited and prayed for God to show them the way.

As they offered their lives up to God, Pablo made a crucial decision. “I told Nicky not to worry: if she decided I was not for her, I would thank her and God for all the good things we had lived together.”

This offer turned out to be the first step in Nicky overcoming her fear, but she wasn’t fully relieved of it until she went and talked the matter over with a friend, who told her simply, “I have told my daughters to find a man who loves Our Lady.” At that moment, her fear vanished, and she knew everything was going to be okay.

The pair returned to Glasgow, “a little shell-shocked,” but with peace in their hearts.

After getting her father’s permission that night (over a few Scottish whiskeys), Pablo asked Nicky to marry him the very next day at the National Shrine of Our Lady in Scotland.

“In some sense, it seemed that God had tested me,” Pablo commented, looking back on the event. “I had to give Nicky back to God freely, and then He gave her back to me.”

Nine months later, exactly one year and one month after first meeting on Catholic Match, the Spanish man and the Scottish lady were married in Elche, Spain. Five months later, they found that Nicky was pregnant.

“God keeps providing for us in our spiritual and material needs through the intercession of St. Joseph and St. Martha,” they said. “Every day we thank God for our vocation and for the gift of one another! St Joseph Pray for us and for all those seeking for their future spouse.”