He Thought He'd Be Single for Life

Chris, 56 and never married, thought he would never find someone to share his life with forever.

Even so, in July of 2018, he signed up for a CatholicMatch membership.  

“I was not hopeful,” he says.

“ I knew I'd be in for the long slog through raised hopes, inane banter, polite conversations, mediocre dinners, and a long process of discernment for either

1) just the right person, or

2) just being a single man the rest of my life.”

Nevertheless, Chris was open to wherever God led him. He was only on CatholicMatch for a month when he saw that the site had matched him with Margot.

“CatholicMatch asked me if I was interested in the match and to select ‘Yes, No, or Unsure.’ I read her profile and felt intrigued by much of what she said.

At least on paper, she appeared to be a woman with similar faith and values. So I selected "Yes."

“I’m here!”

When Margot, 59, noticed Chris had been matched to her and he responded as interested in her, she sent him a smile emoji. Still, she felt like she was compromising by being the first to make contact.

“It was ingrained in me from very early on to never pursue a man, I decided to bend the rules a bit,” Margot, a widow, explains. “I had to make sure he at least saw me! So often in the online world people vanish without a trace."

Even though Chris seemed perfect for her—and he was also from the St. Paul, Minnesota area—she didn’t hold out much hope.

“Something in his warm smile in the picture and the things he said in his profile about ‘our wonderful Catholic faith’ captivated me,” she recalls. “And when I read the description of his ideal match, my heart about jumped out of my throat. I wanted to wave and say, ‘I’m here!’”

Chris did take notice and the couple started chatting via CatholicMatch for a few days, and then they exchanged emails. A week later, they exchanged phone numbers.

About a month later, Chris asked Margot out.

“He asked me out and said that he wanted our first date to be Mass. Be still my heart!”

Margot says their first date was perfect. After Mass they went to brunch and everything seemed to be going extremely well.

“When he walked me to my car, he looked directly at me and said something that might not seem like a big deal, but I will remember it always," she shares.

Chris looked her in the eyes and said, “Would you like to continue?”

It impressed Margot that Chris didn't want to play games.

“He was so direct! So guileless! Of course, I quickly replied, ‘Yes!’ to his question,” she recalls.

A peck on the cheek.

For their second date, Chris and Margot attended Mass at the Minnesota State Fair. During Mass it poured, but it didn’t bother the lovebirds.

“We stayed and exchanged happy glances with each other while others were scurrying for cover,” she laughs. “Thankfully, the sun came out and we had a wonderful day at the fair.”

Later that evening, as they walked to her car, Chris moved in for a kiss.

“I turned my head and offered my cheek,” she remembers. “He pulled back, nodded slowly, looked at me, smiled and said, ‘Ok, we can do chaste.'”

 At that moment, Margot knew that Chris was the one.

God wasn't just nudging me towards this woman.

After just a month, Chris thought that Margot and he were “a match made in Heaven.”

“If you knew our history–our journeys through life–it was clearly evident that this was not a chance occurrence. The signs were everywhere. God was nudging me...no, actually, SHOVING me towards this woman.”

Margot was the answer to Chris’s prayers, and he wasn’t shy about expressing his feelings to her.

“I sprang the ‘L’ word on her on the day before our one-month anniversary,” he reveals.

 Margot answered, "Me too," and they both laughed.

“I felt surprised and also not surprised when he told me he was falling in love with me,” she says.

The kitchen sink proposal...

“The next day I uttered the ‘M’ word, and she looked visibly stunned. I felt stunned also. I mean, holy cow, we'd only known each other for a month! What was I thinkin'?”

“I was flabbergasted and stuttered and my head was spinning,” she recalls. “I could barely get the words out."

Margot told Chris that she needed time to think.

He nodded and said, “I’ll wait.”

"Is this really happening?"

After Chris went home, Margot drove to the 24-hour adoration chapel to sit with Jesus.  “But I couldn’t even get out of the car I was sobbing so hard.”

She couldn’t believe this was really happening.

“I made it into the chapel and after that also spent the next several days in deep prayer and discernment, examining his interactions with family (my own and his), his faith practices, and most importantly asking God what He wanted for me. Everything pointed unmistakably to a resounding “Yes”.

On September 29th, Margot made a candlelight dinner and told Chris that she would marry him.

“She was an answered prayer,” he says. “It was unreal, and it was holy.”

Hi Mom.

On May 10th, 2019, Christ and Margot were married at Holy Family in St Louis Park, Minnesota—the church where they had their first date.

“It was a small wedding with only immediate family and a couple of friends,” they say. 

Chris, who likes a good joke, wrote a message on the bottom of his shoes. “When we knelt for the final blessing, the guests started laughing because I had written ‘Hi Mom’ on the bottoms of my shoes in large white letters—they could all see it.”