Her Barbed First Message Had Him Hooked

Bill and Jackie had both experienced tragedy, but they found happiness together through humor.

Jackie, then in her early 60s, first saw Bill’s picture on CatholicMatch on January 3, 2010—three years to the date after the memorial service for her deceased husband. She was drawn to his smile. So she took the initiative to message Bill first.

And her message seems to have set the tone for their relationship. “I had to re-up to send this to you, so you’d better answer me,” she wrote.

And he was hooked.

Bill says her barbed message had him hooked from the get-go.

“I was attracted to her by her straight-forward truthfulness. No masks with her,” Bill said.

They exchanged emails eight to ten times a day before deciding to meet in person a week later, for lunch. At first, Jackie was nervous about giving out the address for home in the northern suburbs of Chicago and wanted to meet Bill at a neutral location. “Then she said, ‘What the heck, I’m in the phone book, so we agreed I would pick her up for lunch,’” Bill said.

Like Jackie, Bill, who was in his early 70s, had lost his spouse. His wife, Sis, had died suddenly about a year earlier on a visit to their daughter.

“It was very shocking to me and I think I went into an altered state for two or three months. As I started getting myself together with the help of a grief support group at my parish, Old St. Pat’s in Chicago, I came to realize very strongly that I did not want to spend the rest of my life alone. I felt guilty at first, since it was a little less than a year after my Sissie’s death that I got on CatholicMatch, but I prayed and sensed that it was what she would want me to do,” Bill said.

For Jackie, it had been three years since her husband, Roy had passed. In the intervening years, she had watched two of her sons get married.

“I went on a few vacations, did things with the ‘girls,’ but there was always that void. I was sad and lonely and knew why. For me a marriage was having your best friend with you 24/7. I missed that. I missed just something as simple as a touch and a kiss. So I signed up! CatholicMatch made sense as my faith sharing needed to be paramount,” Jackie said.

At first I definitely wanted to re-marry, but then...

After the first date, the two started meeting regularly.

Although Jackie had an initial desire to re-marry, she also had doubts about it.

Bill, on the other hand, says he was certain.

“How did I know she was the right one for me? Well, I have a BS and MS in physics and am decent at deductive and inductive reasoning. Of course, when it comes to people, I use none of that. I just go with my heart. And my heart said in no uncertain terms that she was the right one for me. In fact, my heart was speaking to me before hers spoke to her, I think,” Bill said.

Bill made it his mission to pick out signs that they were meant for each other. One day, on Michigan Avenue in Chicago, they glimpsed a passing truck that had “Roy” inscribed on it—the name of Jackie’s first husband. Together they cried out, “Omen.”

“That reminds me of one great thing we had, and continue to have, in common, and that is humor and laughter. After shared faith, I think that may be the next most important quality of a great marriage,” Jackie said.

Bill continued to bring up the topic of marriage and Jackie would change the subject.

But after a year, she was ready.

It's time

One day, were talking in Bill’s condo. “Suddenly, she got up from her chair and came and sat on my lap and uttered the immortal words, ‘Oh, why not?’" Bill recalled.

“I knew exactly what she meant and almost sent her through the ceiling, jumping for joy,” Bill said.

“I remembered my prayer to God that I find another husband, someone to share the rest of my life with. And here he was. Whatever could go wrong we would work it out together,” Jackie said.

They were married on July 9, 2011, at her parish, Holy Cross. Bill credits Jackie’s “terrific” wedding plans, which included a tent reception at a local park, featuring Irish step dancers. “It was truly a dream come true for this guy of Irish extraction,” Bill said.