After only a week of communicating, Adonay asked Danielle if she would be his girlfriend. Initially, he didn't like her answer!
“When he asked me if I would date him, I was in the car on my way home from work, talking to him on my cell. Right after he asked me the question, which he was obviously nervous to ask, my phone lost service before I could answer," recalls the 24-year-old from Williamsport, Pennsylvania.
She was unable to call him back right away, so for fifteen terrible minutes, Adonay, from Gillette, Wyoming, wondered if he had made the biggest mistake of his life by rushing the relationship. "The poor guy was freaking out. He thought I had hung up on him because we had only known each other a week,” Danielle laughs.
Only two months earlier, Danielle couldn't have fathomed that she would be interested in a man who lived as far away as Wyoming.
Online dating is for geeks
Danielle was categorically against online dating. “That sort of thing was for geeks, and people whole failed in the real-life dating world,” she used to think. “Even if people did meet online, their relationships could not be deep and lasting.”
Then one day, a colleague and a fellow Catholic, whom she respected and admired, revealed to her that he met his wife on CatholicMatch. Like Danielle, he had experienced difficulties in finding a like-minded Catholic spouse. He recommended that she try CatholicMatch. “I made a noncommittal comment that I would ‘look into it,’ and then I put the conversation of my mind,” she says.
With some persistence on her colleague’s part, Danielle eventually joined CatholicMatch near the end of August 2015. The first month on the site, she couldn’t find one member that interested her. Even so, she exchanged messages, viewed profiles, and even made some friends—but there was always something that was missing. “Frustrated, I took a break from the website, and I didn't check my messages for two weeks. Then I received an email from CatholicMatch titled ‘No way am I moving.’ Intrigued, I read it and learned about the success story of another couple whose relationship began very long distance and unfolded in ways that neither of them expected.”
The email that changed everything
One line in the email specifically caught her attention: "What if the man God has chosen for you is right outside the parameters of where you are willing to search?"
Danielle changed her distance parameters from 50 miles of her location to all 50 states even though she felt a lot of trepidation about doing this.
“Previously, I had been involved in a two-year long distance relationship that ended two months after we had gotten engaged, so I had no desire or inclination to have another long distance relationship.”
Laying the matter in God’s hand, she conducted a personalized search and doubtfully extended the results to include the entire United States. She looked through all 263 results, viewing many profiles, and sent four messages. There was one profile and picture in particular that had caught her attention—the look in the man's eyes and his smile went straight to her heart—but she decided not to send a message. “The member lived in Wyoming, and that was too far away. Surely God knew I couldn't handle another relationship with that much distance?”
The guy she decided not to message...
Two days later, on October 16, 2015, Danielle checked her messages again. There were no replies from the previous messages she had sent, but to her amazement, there was one from the one guy she had decided not to message.
Adonay wrote, "Hi Danielle, how are you?"
“I was attracted to her beautiful eyes and smile in her profile picture and her personal information, which mentioned traits I admired such as a love for God and family, loving to laugh, and a passion for music,” says Adonay, 28.
For a week, they messaged constantly, and then Adonay asked if Danielle would like to talk on the phone. “From the first moment that I heard Adonay’s voice, I knew with absolute conviction that he was my future husband," she recalls.
Danielle felt a little ridiculous for feeling this way, but over the next month, her convictions were continually validated. She and Adonay had yet to meet in person, but she felt like she already knew him. They laughed together for hours, prayed together, and read the Bible together over the phone. They discovered that they shared the exact opinions regarding the Catholic faith, family, and the values, and morals. “The most concrete thing that brought me back to my original conviction, time and time again, was the profound sense of peace I felt—it was peace and security I had never experienced in any relationship before.”
Near Thanksgiving, Danielle flew to Wyoming to meet Adonay. “I thought I was in Heaven when I first picked her up at the airport and saw an angel coming to hug me,” Adonay remembers. “I was so nervous at first, but we clicked immediately, and it was like we had been friends for years and as if I had known her forever.”
On December 23, Danielle traveled a second time to spend Christmas and New Years with Adonay and his family. This time Adonay had a special surprise for her.
“I picked her up from the airport in Denver, and we drove back to my hotel so that I could get my things and we could continue on to my sister’s house in Wyoming. I sent Danielle upstairs to the room ahead of me by asking her to grab a bag for me while I spoke to the checkout guy. Instead, I discreetly followed behind her.”
Flowery proposal...literally
When Danielle entered the room, she saw a bed covered with rose petals and an engagement ring. “I bought tons of roses and spelled out ‘Will You Marry Me’ with the petals and then made a rose petal heart around the words and put the ring box in the center,” he says.
Almost from the first week they started talking, the couple had discussed marriage, so Danielle knew a proposal was coming eventually, but she hadn’t thought it would come so soon. “He proposed in a very unexpected way, so it did catch me a bit by surprise,” she shares.
Danielle said, "Yes!" and then the two of them went out to the Cheesecake Factory to celebrate.
Four months later, Danielle moved to Wyoming, and the couple began marriage preparation at St. Matthew's Parish in Adonay's hometown. On September 2, 2016, they were joined in the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony at Danielle's home parish in Pennsylvania. “My favorite part of our wedding was when Father asked Danielle, ‘Do you take this man to be your husband?’ and she looked directly into my eyes and said ‘I do,’" Adonay recalls fondly.
Danielle and Adonay's first baby was born on June 15, 2017.
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