Sandra was so nervous that she intended to walk into the Panera Bread restaurant, pretend she didn’t see Mike, then walk out.
“I was going to make up some lame excuse if he did contact me after that,” she said. When she entered, she spotted Mike filling his iced tea at the fountain. Rather than feeling nervous, she felt an immediate sense of peace run through her whole body.
After introducing themselves, Mike awkwardly suggested they go dutch since it was their first date.
“As I mumbled that—my initial chance at making a good impression—I knew I had blown it,” he said.
But Sandra’s smile and refreshing laugh put him at ease and they sat and talked for two hours. Both wanted a second date.
Three months earlier, Sandra, 60, and Mike, 63, both in Kansas, had met on CatholicMatch. A friend sent Mike an email advertisement about the website. Mike had never dated online so he prayed about it.
“I’ve never been one to pray for myself, but over the years I came to understand how important it is to pray for oneself,” he said. “My prayer became that if God wanted to lead me to some kind of ministry in the church, that I would do so. Or if it was married life again, that it would be with a good, practicing Catholic woman that we could celebrate our faith together.”
After three to four months on the site, Mike contacted Sandra. She had been on the site for about a month after receiving an email from CatholicMatch. “I was at a low point emotionally and feeling very lonely,” she said. “I had never met anyone by just going to church and participating in church activities. I thought this might be a way to meet a Catholic man that was actually interested in dating.”
Before meeting online, both had their share of failed attempts at dating.
Mike went on several first dates, but each made him realize they weren’t the one for him.
Sandra had tried the seniors' dating site OurTime. One man she met there said he’d help her plant flowers. When he arrived at her house, he pulled a lawn chair from his car trunk, sat in it, and watched Sandra plant flowers as he made phone calls. “I call him Lawn Chair Dude,” Sandra laughed. “That was our last ‘date.’”
When Sandra met Mike on CatholicMatch, she was impressed that he always responded to her messages. She also liked that the faith answers on their profiles lined up.
Mike felt the same. “We had similar family upbringings and shared strongly about our family and faith,” he said. “We both had family members with religious vocations very close to us who were influential while growing up.”
Sandra and Mike lived two hours apart, so traveling to see each other presented some difficulties. “We started out slowly,” Sandra said. “We didn’t even have a first kiss until two months into the relationship."
"I think we were both afraid of moving too fast and scaring the other one away.”
Neither wanted to repeat mistakes from their previous marriages.
Mike’s annulment process had been fairly simple. “My first marriage was not in the Catholic Church,” he said. “I received a Decree of Nullity based on the fact that the marriage was not in keeping with the Canonical Form of marriage.” It took about three months to get the decree.
Sandra’s situation was more complicated. She was previously married in the Catholic Church. On her 23rd wedding anniversary, while deployed in Iraq with the Army, she called home. Her husband asked for a divorce. “I did not see that coming,” Sandra said. “The pain and hurt were deep.”
The annulment process helped Sandra heal. It took three years. When the file was complete, she went to the tribunal office and read it. “Reading the tribunal file with all of the witness statements showed me things that had happened just before our marriage that I had never known,” she said. “It showed me that he had never been serious about our marriage."
"The annulment process was one thing that truly helped me on my journey of healing.”
With their previous marriages annulled, Sandra and Mike were both free to marry. But Sandra gave Mike one prerequisite: he had to survive one of her family Thanksgivings with her eight brothers and sisters.
“When we get together, it’s a large crowd and very noisy,” Sandra said. “I have seen more than one sibling lose a boyfriend or girlfriend who was overwhelmed with the number of people or the noise or some other reason they broke up after experiencing the event.”
Mike accepted the challenge and the couple traveled five hours to Sandra’s sister’s home for Thanksgiving. They arrived a day early. Mike secretly asked two of Sandra’s sisters and her brother for their blessing to marry her.
Around 11:30 on Thanksgiving morning, as everyone was socializing and preparing food, Sandra’s niece noticed Mike sitting by himself. He looked preoccupied so she asked if he was okay. Mike handed her his phone and asked her to take pictures. She realized what was happening.
Mike approached Sandra at the stove. She stood with a skillet in her hand as he knelt and proposed in front of everyone.
With a look of surprise, she said yes and they embraced.
They married six months later in May 2019. They were the oldest couple in their premarital classes. “Some of those kids did not look old enough to marry, but maybe that’s just our perspective!” laughed Mike.
Since being married, both acknowledge that making time to spend with their families can be difficult. Both have grown children, and Sandra has grandkids. “Giving each other the space for family outside of ourselves can be tough for us to coordinate,” Mike said.
Sandra also struggles sometimes with allowing Mike to assist her. "Mike can get frustrated when I do not ask for help,” she admitted.
“It’s as if I need to guard my heart against hurt, and being independent is a way to do that.”
But she’s learning to see her new husband’s help as a blessing. “He insists on doing things for me. I have had to do things for myself most of my life so to have someone so willing to share burdens and struggles is refreshing.”
For both, the highlights of marriage far outweigh the challenges. They enjoy being themselves with no need for games. “We can talk about anything and work through issues with a quiet discussion, and open our hearts to each other with no fear,” Sandra said.
This sense of peace and joy is evident in the photos of their first dance at their wedding reception. “The relaxed feeling and sense of ‘I found my special someone’ were easy to see in the photos later,” Sandra said. “I was never anxious or nervous, just happy and at peace."
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