He Messaged Her Four Times With No Reply!
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In 2017, after losing his first wife to cancer and mourning the loss of her, Walter joined CatholicMatch to find his match.
"When I decided that I didn't want to live the rest of my life alone I knew I needed a good Catholic lady," says Walter, 79. "I heard about CatholicMatch.com, and I went on. I was looking at the profiles when I saw an attractive blond named Sylvia."
In April 2019, Walter, from Idaho, messaged Sylvia, 71, but she didn't answer him!
Sylvia, from Nevada, explains, "I was on CatholicMatch, but I didn't have a subscription, so I wasn't very active!"
In September 2019, Walter noticed that Sylvia looked at his profile again, so he made another attempt and messaged her.
"She didn't answer," he says.
In December 2019, Sylvia again viewed Walter's profile! Undaunted, Walter sent her a third message.
In March 2020, you guessed it! Sylvia looked at Walter's profile again, and for the fourth time, the courageous Walter messaged her.
"I said, 'Hey! You look at my profile four times, and you haven't answered me. You must be interested. Let's get together so you can satisfy your curiosity." Along with the message, he included his phone number.
No answer to her text...
When Walter had messaged her all of those times, Sylvia had felt too busy to respond, and she kept putting it off. She told herself she'd have time for CatholicMatch—and maybe Walter—after she retired from her position as a high school teacher.
Even so, Sylvia felt captivated by Walter's messages, and that's why she kept returning to his profile.
"His writing touched me so," she shares. "I loved reading his messages. I thought, 'I bet if I look at his profile, he'll send me another message.'"
In March 2020, she had more time to think about her love life because she had finally signed her retirement papers, and the country was locked down. After Water sent her his number, she texted him.
He didn't reply to her text!
When Walter didn't text her back, Sylvia wondered why. She decided to find out, and so on March 18th, 2020, she dialed his number. It turned out that his number was a landline, so Walter never received her text!
"We talked for hours!" she shares. "Then after we hung and he called me back an hour later and said, 'I'm going to California to bring my granddaughter a car for her graduation. If I change my route, I can come visit you on the way."
Sylvia started feeling nervous about meeting Walter, and so she called him at 4 am because she knew he had plans to leave early. She told him that she didn't feel well. Walter assured her that he would pray for her, and he said he would call to check on her as soon as he crossed state lines.
24-hours after first phone call, he was standing at her door!
By 5:00 pm, when Walter arrived, she felt fine, and they visited for over two hours before he resumed his trip to California.
Walter left the visit thinking that he liked Sylvia.
And Sylvia also thought the same, "I felt so comfortable with him," she says. "People would try to fix me up, and I would always think how I couldn't wait for the date to end."
Walter dropped his granddaughter's car off and then flew home. All the while, he couldn't get Sylvia off his mind, and he wanted to see her again. However, Nevada was closed down, and no hotels were open.
"I told her, 'I don't want to have to wait for the pandemic to end to see you again,'" he shares.
"You haven't proposed yet!"
A month later, Walter made a return visit. Then he wanted Sylvia to come to visit him, but she was worried about the optics—she didn't want anyone to get the wrong idea about them. Walter persuaded her to come by, telling her that she could come to Mass with him. In Nevada, the churches remained closed, and Sylvia yearned to receive the Holy Eucharist.
When Walter's parish, St. Paul's in Nampa, live-streamed the Mass, she would see him in the congregation. "He would wave at me," she laughs.
Wanting to attend Mass with Walter, the end of May 2020, Sylvia traveled to Idaho, where she got to meet one of Walter's favorite priests, Fr. Jerry Funke. After Mass, the couple and the priest went out to dinner at the Man Creek Cafe in Weiser, Idaho. Walter began to tell Fr. Jerry how he and Sylvia wanted to get married.
Having none that, she piped up and said, 'Well, you haven't proposed to me yet!"
Then Walter got down on one knee!
"One of the things I admired about Walter was that he wasn't wishy-washy," she says. "I wanted to marry Walter; he was everything I wanted. He was a serious Catholic, he had a happy first marriage, and he didn't have any baggage. We are also similar ages. Also, his personality is out of this world."
She knew the importance of having a Catholic wedding!
Sylvia wanted to do everything right when she married Walter. After her first husband died when she was only 27, she rushed into a second marriage, which ended in divorce after 20 years. Since the Justice of Peace presided over her second marriage, it was quickly annulled within three months of filing.
The memory of the failed marriage increased Sylvia's desire for a sacramental marriage with Walter.
"My first wedding was a big Catholic wedding, so I knew the difference between getting married by the JP and having the blessing of the church," she says. "Twenty years later when I met Walter, I told him that I wanted to get married in the Church."
Deciding when to get married...
Walter and Sylvia began discussing when they should get married. Sylvia suggested June of 2021, but Walter thought that was too long to wait.
"We're too old to wait around," Walter said.
He asked Fr. Jerry if he could marry them privately right away, and then they could have a big church wedding later in June. Fr. Jerry said, you can't do that: "The Church only allows you one bite of the apple. If I marry you privately, you can't have a second wedding in the church."
The couple talked to Sylvia's priest, Fr. John Assalone, and the priest asked her when she would like to get married. Sylvia asked for a date after Thanksgiving, thinking that she'd get married sometime in the spring, but her priest said, to Sylvia's surprise, "How about December 5th, 2020?"
"Slyvia put it in high gear and began planning the wedding," he says.
"What Sylvia wants, Sylvia gets"
On December 5th, 2020, the couple said their vows at St. Francis of Assisi Catholic Church in Henderson, Nevada. Covid restrictions limited the number of guests they could invite, so Walter and Sylvia had a smaller wedding.
"My governor kept changing the number of guests we could invite," she explains. It went from 50 to 120 back to 50 again. We were going back-and-forth with our guests telling them they could come to the dinner, but not to the church."
The couple felt honored to have three priests concelebrate their wedding Mass: Fr. John Assalone, Fr. Jerry Funke, and Fr. Caleb Vogel.
After the wedding, Walter and Sylvia honeymooned in Cancun for eight days. The couple spends time in Idaho on Walter's farm and in Nevada at her home. Before they married, Walter had assured Sylvia that she could go home any time she wanted. He loves to spoil his wife, and he likes to say often, "What Sylvia wants, Sylvia gets."