Lisa wasn’t sure if she was ready to date. It was the summer of 2010 and it had been a year since she’d lost her husband to a heart attack after 22 years of marriage. Not only was she unsure about her readiness, she was also unsure about her desire. When she saw the ad for CatholicMatch in her parish bulletin, it seemed like an ideal solution.
“What a great idea,” she recalled thinking. “I can talk to someone online and not have to mess with dating.” As Lisa saw, the soft and manageable communication that comes with online dating was a good way to see if she was really ready.
Lisa & Jay suffered through death and divorce on their way to each other.
Jay was living in the Pacific Northwest. The 53-year-old had gone through a divorce, but his love of God continued, as well as his enjoyment of simple pleasures—his yard, the rising and setting of the sun and a game of golf. The match system paired him up with 46-year-old Lisa, and with her not having any luck in her native Kentucky, she was open to communication—in fact, the distance between them served her overall goal of proceeding with caution.
After weeks of online communication, they moved to phone calls and Skype. In November 2010, they decided to get together in person. Jay came to Nashville, just a two-hour drive for Lisa. “We had the best time of our lives,” Lisa told CatholicMatch. “I knew then, I was ready and wanted a relationship with Jay, and so did he.”
Lisa's three daughters all enthusiastically embraced Jay's entry into their mom's life.
