Brian, of Louisville, Kentucky, had tried using secular dating apps like Bumble and Tinder without much success before his roommate convinced him to try CatholicMatch in 2020 to find someone who shared his faith. Two years later, he met Katie.
For her part, Katie, of Phoenix, Arizona, felt content to live as a single woman and had sworn off dating. She frequented Eucharistic Adoration, and it was this devotion that led her to feel the Holy Spirit calling her to join CatholicMatch. After resisting the call at first, she joined the app but didn’t take it seriously, thinking it was just a test from the Lord; then, in May 2022, she met Brian.
They each sought St. Joseph’s intercession...
During his pursuit, Brian had prayed for St. Joseph’s intercession in helping him find a spouse. Fast forward almost two years, and he stumbled upon Katie’s profile on the feast of St. Joseph the Worker. Thinking she looked pretty and seemed to take her faith seriously, he sent her a message.
After creating her account, Katie prayed a novena to St. Joseph the Worker, asking for his intercession in her pursuit, and she saw his profile at the end of that novena.
“I did a novena to St. Joseph the Worker, and said, ‘If there is anyone I ought to be talking to make it clear, and [Brian] messaged me on the feast of St. Joseph the Worker,” she recalled.
Just under a year prior, Katie had
After looking at his profile, Katie thought Brian looked normal and friendly, but didn’t want to send him a message. But Brian saw that she had viewed his profile, so he sent her that first message, and the pair quickly hit it off.
They shared a Guinness over FaceTime!
After about a week and a half of chatting on the app, their conversations were going so well that Katie stopped talking to other guys on the app, and the pair exchanged phone numbers. Brian made a memorable impression by sending Katie a Will Ferrell dancing GIF. The pair soon had their first virtual date via FaceTime, during which they each enjoyed Guinness, Brian’s favorite beer, which happens to be the only beer Katie likes.
“She doesn't really even drink beer, but when she does, she drinks Guinness. So it was nice, and the more I reflect on it, the more things just kind of happened naturally,” Brian recalled.
From there, the couple continued texting and communicating virtually, noting that it felt very natural and that their relationship already seemed blessed by God.
“It was extremely natural, (the relationship) felt like something that was blessed and ordained by God.”
They consecrated their relationship to St. Joseph during his first visit.
Shortly after their Guinness date, the pair were ready to meet in person and made a bet to decide who would visit whom first. Katie sent local salsa from Phoenix for Brian to try, and if he liked it better than Texas Pete hot sauce, he had to make the trip to Arizona first; if not, she would travel to Kentucky. But perhaps, in answer to her prayers, after something came up preventing him from trying her Arizona salsa on the day he was supposed to, Brian called Katie and said he would travel her way first.
So, in mid-August, Brian traveled to Phoenix, where the pair finally met in person and braved the humidity to visit the Grand Canyon, Tucson, and other attractions across the Copper State together. Most importantly, they visited St. Joseph Catholic Church in Williams, Arizona, where they consecrated their relationship to St. Joseph in front of the Blessed Sacrament.
“We didn't know that there was going to be adoration at that chapel at that specific time, but lo and behold, there was Jesus right there (as they made the act of consecration),” Brian recounted.
For Katie, being able to make this consecration in this church was even more significant because less than a year prior, to mark the end of the year of St. Joseph, she had been at this very church asking for its patron’s intercession after coming out of a nasty relationship.
“I asked St. Joseph to send me someone who was like him, and asked him to pray for me, for my future spouse,” she said. “So it was really cool to then, nine some odd months later, to be consecrating our relationship to St. Joseph in that same church.”
Their spiritual director providentially offered her a job in Louisville.
A few weeks later, Katie visited Louisville, where they visited some sites and enjoyed some nice walks. During this visit, they also began receiving spiritual direction from Father Adam Carrico. It had started to become clear to Katie that she was meant to move to Louisville, rather than Brian moving to Phoenix. So she asked Fr. Adam how they should discern who moves to whom, at which point the priest told her he had a job available for her, settling the matter. The day after Thanksgiving, Katie moved to Louisville, roughly a year after praying to St. Joseph for a spouse like him. Now, as God had made it pretty clear that the couple was heading in the direction of marriage, all that was needed was a ring.
A beaver helped him with his proposal!
Fast forward a few months to May 1, their one-year anniversary and the feast of St. Joseph the Worker, Brian had tried to plan a surprise proposal at Cherokee Park, one of Louisville’s most scenic parks and one of the couple’s favorite places to walk.
He had invited two of his cousins and their husbands to capture the moment secretly.
As he and Katie walked through the park, however, he noticed the husbands' cars driving around, and she could hear his cousins rustling through the woods, trying to keep track of them. Just when he needed a distraction to make sure his cousins didn’t spoil the surprise, he spotted a beaver, which was an animal they had never seen at this park.
“I heard them coming out of the woods, and I was like, ‘What's going on there?’ And that's when he said, ‘Look, babe, a beaver,’ and kind of distracted me,’” Katie recalled.
While she was distracted by the beaver, Brian dropped to one knee. But while grabbing the ring out of his jacket hood, where he had hidden it, the ring fell out, and he had to scramble to find it.
“As I was trying to find the ring, it actually fell out. So I said, ‘What was that?’ I was still trying to play, you know, a game, in a way, trying to distract her and make sure that it would be a surprise. Clumsily, as I did, I think it was somewhat of a surprise,” Brian said.
The eventful proposal ended with a “yes” from Katie.
A beautiful wedding with all the ‘smells and bells’...
The newly engaged couple quickly focused on planning their big day, which they originally wanted to schedule for October 21, the feast of Blessed Karl of Austria, another one of their relationship patrons. But to give their families enough notice and themselves enough time to prepare, they scheduled the wedding for January 13 of the next year. This was perhaps an act of divine providence, as they later realized January 13 was the same date Brian had received the sacrament of confirmation.
While the couple described the period after the engagement and before the wedding day as “purgative,” they were grateful to their family and friends who helped make the planning as smooth as possible.
Finally, the wedding day arrived, and the couple was married at what had become both of their home parish, the Shrine of St. Martin of Tours in Louisville, with Fr. Adam presiding. The couple recalled what a beautiful Mass it was, with Fr. Adam celebrating in the ad orientem (meaning “to the east”) posture, with Gregorian chant, and “all the smells and bells.”
“It was a very reverent and beautiful mass. It was really a glimpse of Heaven,” Brian said. “There's really no other way to put it, it was so beautiful.”
After the Mass, the newlyweds enjoyed a Christ-centered, fun reception with family and friends at a local art gallery, which included plenty of memorable moments, including a “cake battle” between the couple.
“I smashed the cake in his face. So we got into a little bit of a cake battle, I think that shocked some people,” Katie laughingly recalled.
Since the wedding, the couple has adjusted smoothly to their new life in Louisville and has been blessed with a strong community of family and friends. The pair has also welcomed their first child into the world.
Advice for CatholicMatch users:
Brian advises CatholicMatch users, especially those who have been using the app but haven’t found anyone and may be disparaging about modern dating, not to lose hope, but to remember that sometimes you might need to take a “leap of faith” in God.
“Don't lose hope that God can work, quite literally, in any situation at all. Once you lose that hope from God, you're doing yourself a huge disservice,” he said.
“Just close your eyes and take that leap of faith,” he added. “No amount of complaining about modernity and all of its ills, which everybody knows about, is going to change the fact that if it is your vocation to get married, then God desires it for you, so He'll make it work.”
Katie advises CatholicMatch users to cling to the sacraments and be obedient to what God is telling them as they use the app.
“Stay close to the sacraments, especially to the Blessed Sacrament, and be obedient to what God is asking you. He can take your very small ‘yeses,’ and can turn them into something really beautiful.”
