In many ways, Lenny had it all, or at least close to it. The 44-year-old accountant from south Florida had a good job with a company that was growing. He had a close relationship with his family and an active life, from running marathons to making an excursion to Italy to see family.
One thing was missing—“A woman that is Catholic, with a positive outlook on life and with a passion for living,” as he described it in his CatholicMatch profile.
Ivania was ten years younger at 34, but it was fair to say that life’s challenges had given her a deeper faith. Born and raised in El Salvador, and working as an elementary school teacher, she’d gone through the pain of divorce. But on the far side of the pain was the great of her now five-year-old son. She decided to emigrate to Florida where her parents were living.
Her roots in El Salvador were what Ivania attributed her traditional moral values to, and upon her arrival in Florida, her brother suggested that she try online dating. “I was skeptical, she recalled. “Until I read an ad about CatholicMatch in the church’s weekly bulletin, I reluctantly decided to give it a try.
Lenny wasn’t as reluctant, but it was also the church bulletin that pointed him in CatholicMatch’s direction. “My mother always wanted me to meet and hopefully marry a nice Catholic woman,” he said. “Before Mass…she saw an advertisement…pointed out the website to me and I was intrigued.
It was Ivania who made the first connection online, sending Lenny a chat request. “After reading Lenny’s profile and looking at his pictures, I couldn’t help sending him a smiley,” she recalled. “That was the beginning of a beautiful romance,” she concluded, in Bogart-esque terms.
Their first dates went better than either one could have imagined. “We both knew we were a match and that God and the Virgin Mary had brought us together,” Lenny said. Indeed, the more time they spent together, the more they loved each other.
